001good afternoon ladies and gentlemen today the board will participate in an equity workshop and if the board deems it necessary a special meeting will follow i now call the board workshop to order at 1 pm on may 26 2021 mrs bass please call the roll district one barbara mcquinn here district 2 alexandria ayala here district 3 karen brill district 4 erica whitfield here district 5 frank barbieri district 6 marcia andrews here district 7 deborah robinson we have quorum with six board members present also joining us is superintendent dr donald fenoy general counsel sean bernard inspector general theresa michael and board clerk carol bass senior staff members will join us periodically as directed by the superintendent viewers and listeners can access the meeting today by either watching on comcast channels 234 and 235 u-verse channel 99
002or by using the youtube link on our web page at palm beach schools dot org in the event that the link is interrupted for technical reasons please switch over to the tv channels all board meetings are recorded in their entirety and posted on the district website within 24 hours we also offer a listening only option which the public can access by calling zero zero 561-357-5900 toll free at one eight six six nine three zero seven zero one five the meeting id is one five six one eight eight zero one one two four pound sign this meeting is being transcribed by a closed captioner so remember to speak at a reasonable pace well everyone please stand for the pledge to be led by superintendent fenoy i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of
003america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to welcome any public speakers who are joining us in person today while your attendance here at the board meeting is appreciated please be mindful of important safety protocols that the board now has in place to conform with covet 19 safety guidelines and school board policies the school district of palm beach county supports the peaceful assembly of persons to express themselves regarding matters concerning district students employees in the community however if such peaceful assembly results in a disturbance those persons may be subject to arrest or other lawful action so please be respectful of all persons who are present on school disc prop school district property today in an effort to keep all participants and
004district employees safe everyone must obey all awful orders issued by law enforcement which may include remaining or moving to a specific area location lowering voices for safety reasons or other safety related comment commands please sit only in designated seats do not move any furniture and do not move about the room unless you are speaking at the podium exiting to the restroom or leaving the building please maintain social distancing at all times remain in the designated areas and leave the property once your visit is complete school police has been instructed to remove anyone from the meeting who does not adhere to these safety protocols and procedures as i have outlined please respect this cautionary warning that in the event of interference with the orderly processes of the meeting failure to follow the safety protocols and procedures
005or otherwise disruptive conduct will result in removal of the person from the meeting or other action thanking thanking you in advance for helping to maintain decorum and the orderly conduct of school board business before i turn over the workshop to the superintendent we will first hear from in-house speakers followed by recorded speakers on the topic of today's workshop as i call your name please come to the nearest podium i'll call you three at a time when you get to the podium it doesn't matter which order you were in out of those three whoever gets there first just take the microphone and please stay your name for the record as you start to speak please watch the clock with a lot of speakers we have see we have 45 speakers today so please be mindful of
006the clock so we can get through everyone in a timely fashion uh if you have three minutes to speak i don't like to cut anybody off but so please don't don't make me do that please try and watch the clock and finish up within the three minutes we'll start with representative omari hardy chuck ridley rory gellerman i'm sorry if i mispronounced that would one of you all three of you come up and one of you take the podium first hold on a minute what's your microphone on try again can you hear me yes okay state your name please my name is rory geller muhammad thank you for this opportunity to speak my name is rory geller muhammad and i am here today to express support for the school district's current equity statement i am here
007speaking as a parent of a three and five-year-old in district three as a licensed clinical social worker a member of organizing against racism palm beach county alliance and today especially i am here representing the palm beach unit of the national association of social social workers also known as the nasw the nasw is the largest membership organization of professional social workers in the world with over 100 000 members and 4259 members in florida i'm standing before you today with my colleagues speaking on behalf of over 500 local members of the palm beach nasw unit many of whom are also parents with children in schools in the district throughout the county not only are we in support of the current equity statement but also here to offer our help in this work as mental health professionals that
008work in various capacities throughout the county including the school district we understand how important the current equity statement is to ensure that the district is working towards racial equity for students and actively doing the work to dismantle racism and other systems of oppression and inequity as social work professionals that work with children youth adults and families we wholeheartedly support the school district's statement and commitment as you have written it to dismantle structures rooted in white advantage and transform our systems by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes we know from experience how important this is for the educational well-being of the children and youth in our county in closing as a parent mental health clinician and as a representative speaking on behalf of the
009over 500 members of the palm beach county unit of the national association of social workers we not only urge you to keep the current equity statement but we are also inspired by it and are here to support you in our community and living up to it thank you i'm also a member of the organizing against racism palm beach county alliance and we're calling upon the school board to uphold the current mission and vision statement which is a representation to the commitment of equity for student success the organizing against racism palm beach county alliance is a network of more than 250 individuals representing residents parents nonprofit organizations service providers educational institutions businesses and governments to name a few across the county who want to support each other while deepening our understanding of how to be effective
010anti-racist we have come together to develop awareness around how racism lives in each of us and in our institutions so it can be strong organized and clear in our efforts to dismantle racism thank you thank you foreign to the board chair the board itself superintendent my name is chuck ridley and i represent today the coalition for black student achievement for those who are not aware of who the coalition is our mission and purpose is in our name and we take that and make that statement unapologetically also i'm here to speak in support of the equity statement as currently written i'm not really sure how we got here so let me just start by saying the black children and families of this county deserves better than this from this board your employees deserve better than this
011from this board and for god's sake u.s colleagues deserve better from each other this is absolutely ridiculous for over 25 years the coalition has come to this body advocating for equity and in numerous meetings those of you who are sitting on this board have pledged your support i've watched this entire process and not once did i hear from any of you any misgivings around the process and how you ended with the final product in fact i started questioning myself asking had i did i have a bad read on you all had you become to understand the very nature and impact of structural racism had you begin to understand how structural racism created genocide created chattel slavery stole mass murder of folk who looked like me and folk who was here long before any of us
012got here and i've sat through and watched you as a board challenge when the statement was made by one of your employees and that man lost his career and i saw the passion but i wasn't wrong you are exactly who i thought you were and oftentimes you accuse me of calling you racist i've never called you racist at a school board meeting that don't mean i haven't called you racist just didn't do it at a school board meeting at school board meetings i call you cowards because you will not stand and i've seen you cave too often to powerful interest so to the remaining of the community nobody is going to come save us so we invite each of you who want to fight for equity for children to join the coalition for black student
013achievement this saturday look on our website find us and we're going to tell you how we're going to organize the endless nonsense after representative hardy i'll call three more names be ready please megan bell anita winkas and george borowski go ahead sir okay well first off uh thank you guys for recognizing me and for giving me the three minutes during this meeting um my mother retired a few years ago after a three decade long career in education she taught history and so when we did things as a family history education was often infused into it going into the third grade that summer we had a vacation we went up all the way up the east coast we stopped in some cities savannah colonial williamsburg and in williamsburg i bought i bought a toy musket it
014was the kind of musket you could hold in your hand but it was very realistic and we had brought our cousins along and so i was playing with my cousin with this toy musket and my mom saw us and she was across the room she rushed over and said oh no took the toy musket from me and put it in her person i didn't see that for the rest of the vacation and i asked her i said why are you taking my toy and she said to me i'm not going to allow some police officer to mistake this for a real gun so that he could shoot you now i said in my head not out of my mouth but in my head that this lady's crazy and years later when i saw 12 year
015old tamir rice played with a toy gun in a park on surveillance camera and i saw him be shot by that officer i realized by the way he was a little older than me i realized what my mother was talking about that is white advantage white advantage is being able to do the things that children do and for your parents to not have to worry whether some person looking at this black boy doing a child's thing like playing with a toy gun or walking back from the store as trayvon martin was with skittles and soft drinks white advantage is being able to live your life without having to worry about if those things will kill you so as you guys think about whether you can combat white advantage without calling it out by name i
016ask you to acknowledge first that it's real that you can't fight it without calling it by name and that what folks in my community need are for our leaders to not be faint-hearted about these issues and to have the courage that's required to do the work of ending racism in this country that's all we ask hi my name is megan bell and i'm here to speak in support of the equity statement as it is written first of all i want to say thank you thank you to the board members who are sitting on the diocese thank you for writing the equity policy that you have written thank you for your bravery and thank you for naming names and calling a spade a spade it made me very proud to be a parent of three children
017in palm beach county school district schools it made me proud to be a teacher and it made me proud to be an alumni to read the equity statement as you wrote it thank you for the time and the effort that you put in to craft that statement it is very clear that each word was specifically chosen it's very clear that there's so much time and energy put into that policy when you read it thank you also for putting the 200 000 children that are in your care in your hearts and in your minds as you make decisions on this diocese because you know that you are here to help the children to be strong healthy productive members of society and not to listen to a fringe angry group of parents thank you for acknowledging the
018world that we live in that we were all born into that has white advantage and thank you for your equity statement which inspires us to build a better world for our children we must name it to know it and to fix it and the equity policy as it is written gives words and voice to the systems that we live in as i was talking to community members and family members about this issue people ask me but i know white advantage exists in the world but is it really in palm beach county schools and i had to tell them unfortunately yes it is white children in palm beach county schools are 3.6 times more likely than black students to be in ap classes and because you all keep those children in your hearts you know that
019that can impact the rest of their lives whether they are in an ap class or not in palm beach county schools black children are 4.2 times more likely than white children to be suspended and because you keep our children close to your heart you know that that can have an impact on the rest of their lives their ability to get scholarships their ability to go to college their abilities to even stay in their homes also palm beach county schools are considered highly segregated according to national metrics which means that black students are in black schools and white students are in white schools that's not reflective of our communities that we live in but you guys are aiming to do better with this equity statement so i'm asking you to please keep the statement as it
020is written because naming white advantage is good for all of our students even our white students because if we do not identify white advantage for what it is and we do not name it and acknowledge it then we are taking away from our white children one of the best learning tools they could possibly have which is natural consequences as an educator we know that natural consequences are one of the most powerful teachers so please keep the equity statement as it is written for all of our students black white everybody thank you my name is anita winkas thank you for the opportunity to speak i'm a member of organizing against racism palm beach county alliance we are calling upon the school board of palm beach county to uphold the current mission and vision statement which is
021a representation to the commitment of equity for student act success we stand in opposition to the potential repeal of the recent recently approved school district of palm beach county's equity statement now more than ever it is critical to not only close achievement gaps that have long been burdensome to black and brown students but to create a future where every student regardless of race ethnicity gender identity ability and sexual orientation and or other identities achieve educational equity as a voting resident of district 2 i know that removing acknowledgement of white advantage only adds fuel to the false claims that the district is teaching white children to be ashamed of their skin color we know that isn't true and the remedy is not to remove the truth but to educate on the truth the truth is not
022divisive the truth is not divisive racism is divisive so thank you after mr barrowski catherine camino camino cindy falco and beverly becker am i on okay hi guys my name is george browski my siblings and i were born into a one bedroom apartment in brooklyn new york we grew up in the inner city streets where everyone looked different but was born into the same struggles regardless of skin tone i had to walk to school and fear every day because of avenue games when i made it to school it reminded me of my treatment here last week and how i was treated with no compassion for my opinion being met with political police force and metal detectors my middle school in brooklyn felt like a prison windows with metal bars to keep kids inside or being
023thrown out by gangs in the school it was dirty old buildings covered with graffitis ran by political types like you this the color of my skin had nothing to do with the fact i went to public school even though it was hell for me on most days to get my high school diploma the color of my skin had nothing to do with my choice to work three dead-end jobs cleaning bathrooms and flipping burgers while attending community college the color of my skin had nothing to do with the sleepless nights spent studying to get my grades up to transfer from community college to to attain my bachelor's degree in economics i always worked low paying jobs while studying and trying to get my economics degree after college i was finally hired it was because of the
024hundreds of resumes i submitted relentlessly in finding an employer to give me a shot this was because of my effort not my skin color in fact my boss my boss looked differently to me he saw me who for who i was not based on my skin color he saw me as a hard-working kid who wanted this job and was going to do the best that he can do for the company after college when i was finally hired all of my hard work was based on 80 hours plus a week working i worked a full-time job and started a business i i maxed out my credit cards to fund my business i worked hundreds of hours a week my full-time job in my business i'm here today to tell you because it's not because of my
025right advantage it's because of my hard work the message that you're sending to kids is unfair you're teaching them that their skin color is going to put them at a disadvantage it's it's untrue i'm an any city kid i feed the system what i see today is i see political hacks i see something as an adult that i've never thought that i would see i figured out that the path that you are causing for these kids is is basically a path of liberal liberal communism i see that you want to talk about skin color you don't want to teach our kids that they can do anything they can do and that the system isn't rigged against them it's based on their efforts and hard work um i have no political affiliation but i happen to
026look up all your political affiliations and find that most of you are democrats i'm not surprised this is no longer the party of jfk you're now the party of communism you have definitely done a disgrace to jfk in the uh you definitely have made it sure that i will never register as a democrat catherine camino cindy falco beverly becker first catherine camino catherine camino my name is cindy falco call it what you may but it's the same black lives matter critical race theory now they're trying to fool you with equity embedded system they're changing the word it's all the same lie and it all leads to marxism hatred and murder this is the theater of theatrics and they are using your children to play the part it's straight up communism and hate hate your country
027hate white people hate anything that is good and true they are teaching your children to turn against you just as hitler did in the time of communism with the jewish people parents wake up do not be deceived by the color coding that they're trying to do to confuse you they think they can fool you with nice words and a play on words like equity so you associate it with equality but it's nothing of equality they actually had a workshop on using beautiful words and talking to each other on how they can hide this evil and hatred that they want you and your children to act out here's a few samples they use words like oh we'll use the word embrace or the joy of learning emotional affirm inspire you throw out words like candy to
028hide the evil that you are doing as many have stated you can't put lipstick on a pig and make evil look good we the people have awoke to your schemes and we will not tolerate one more minute of it deborah robinson says robinson says stop killing the children's dreams i say to you stop teaching them to hate and stop muzzling our children they are not your children and they are not yours to experiment on take your hands off of them now frank babery says he wants to bring on board the evil of marxism under the guise of equity embedded system for adoption now really this is neo-marxism parents look it up for yourselves he wants your children he wants to indoctrinate your children he wants to teach your children hate if you're white or if
029you're black i don't see color i see human beings because we're all created in the image of god and if you keep buying into this system parents about a spin color lighter brown darker brown white we're all shades of beige wake up and smell the coffee and stop buying into this evil that they're trying to perpetuate on you and myself and who is this mary for takis really she calls herself the educational equity consultant this woman needs to be taken out of her position and i'm going to leave my last words with you but when a long train of abuses and receptions pursuing inavailability the same objective events are designed to reduce them under absolute deposition it is the right it is the duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for
030the future i am telling every one of you on the diocese you are [Applause] fired catherine community statement by definition according to the school district of palm beach county is the following equity means each student regardless of race ethnicity poverty disability language status undocumented status religious affiliation gender identity and sexual orientation will have access to the opportunities resources and support they need to imagine nurture and achieve their dreams let us break this down regardless of race my example here is qualifying for the gifted program if you are caucasian and of median income the rules for qualifying under plan a basically a gifted checklist and an iq score of 130 or higher if you are not caucasian and not of median income the rules for you are the same but they're plan b and your score
031only has to be 112. regardless of disability my example here is a personal one as i have worked in ese for 20 years as an occupational therapy assistant and have seen many inequalities for children with disabilities they have been left out on so many levels school field trips school plays inaccessible playgrounds lack of scholarship and sport opportunities non-verbal students literally have no voice to express even a simple yes or no in any format regardless of gender my example here is one question do we offer every sport for every gender regardless of sexual orientation my example here is another question sexual orientation why are we giving equity based on sexual orientation to children ages 3 to 18 who are in school to learn how to read write and do arithmetic why is sexual orientation something we
032need to give equity to i mean sexual orientation is defined as a person's sexual preference and as we navigate education educating our children amidst social media a rapidly changing society a lack of anything close to normal this last year soaring human trafficking and a billion dollar child pornography industry why in god's name would we even put that language in a public school statement of any kind sexual orientation by law in palm beach county where i might remind everyone that jeffrey epstein was arrested for sexual crimes against our children of palm beach county it is a crime for any child under the age of 18 to legally consent to sexual activity again let me ask why are we talking about sexual preferences as it is related to public school education servicing children all of whom are
033under the age of legal consent it is one thing to come up with statements policies procedures and plan it is a whole other thing to actually implement them and follow them and i personally feel we need less statements policies procedures and plans we need to be kind humans that help all children read write and learn arithmetic because this is school i'm not sure if that was kathryn kamini or beverly becker she didn't state her name so if beverly becker if you haven't spoken come up to the podium if you were catherine camino and you haven't spoken please come up seeing neither one of you look called three more atlanta monath edward delezzo and greg labad hello good man hi good afternoon my name is alana monach do not mistake our pass island for acquiesce you
034are voted and entrusted to speak on behalf of the people our children but it is clear you are not fulfilling your job duties and your oath of office last week's meeting mr barbarian said he had no idea what drt was create critical race theory i believe since you have been an elected official for the school board since 2008 where you served as chair and vice pair an excerpt from hillsdale college there are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory including equity social justice diversity and inclusion and culturally responsive teaching critical race theorists masters of language construction realized that neo-marxism would be a hard sell equity on the other hand sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the american principle of equality there you have it equity embedded school system
035is not equality and community unity this is programming inciting this division and the laws of children's innocence and here we are today to address the semen of the curriculum you are going to shove down people's throats under the guise of repetitive descriptive jargon used to placate people so they are confused by what seems to sound good but don't have the common sense to question it governor dishanson said last week if you put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig no matter what verbiage you use or change to make it more palatable for the public to agree we know what this curriculum is all about look at the district organizational chart the students parents and community of palm beach county are at top therefore reiterating what the florida constitution states article 1 section 1 all
036power political power is inherent in the people we the people decide and choose not you florida constitution 2.01 confirms florida is the commonwealth state john adams said a constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored liberty once lost is lost forever martin luther king jr said i look to a day when people will not be judged by the core of their skin but by the contact of their character this is what we want taught not anti-americanism indoctrinating equity crt crap and not programs funded by the bill and melinda gates foundation it's time to play whack-a-mole in palm beach county governor to santa's the time is now i yield my time thank you go ahead sir state your name uh good afternoon my name is ed dolezal and i thank you quite frankly
037a board for awakening the spirit of we the people in this county you have no idea what you have done and i'm grateful for it i'm here to object to the to the community the crt curriculum the critical race uh curriculum it is divisive and creates ranker not cooperation and respect for one another i demand you immediately drop and stop this indoctrination of our children there are children not yours i recommend you institute intense civics training based on the bill of rights in our constitutions you may want to reread this next i'd like to address mr barbieri arrogance for not recognizing that we the people allow you to serve with our consent ours not yours and we can withdraw it at any time look at your organizational chart by the way the board reports to
038who we the people that's us also i'm surprised to see miss ayala at this meeting because it's apparently been revealed that she does not live in the district she says she represents in the frontry that can't be tolerated i urge the board to deal with this uh conflict and do it immediately lastly drop indoctrination and return to education and civics oh and by the way as was said by my previous by the previous speaker the governor is going to be addressing this whole critical race theory and will be very aggressive i yield my time mr chairman point of information please good miss oil could we please ask all speakers moving forward to refrain from clapping the rest of the meeting during speakers and after i don't think that's going to go over well with as
039long as they keep order in the room while the speaker's walking up i have no issue with them clapping as long as they're not hollering and carrying on i don't know what's going on in that other room over there the police officer needs to keep those people uh un under control over there because it cuts out the microphone please take care of that go ahead sir stay tuned for i start my speech does anyone want to make any generalizations about me because of my skin color let me ask you sir do you have a mask on yes i do my name is greg labad and i have two kids in palm beach county elementary school my wife is a palm beach county school teacher it's definitely hard to muster the courage to speak today on
040such a sensitive topic i'm worried about getting canceled i'm worried about being labeled a racist i'm not a racist but i have to stand up to people like you who divide us and teach the victim mentality to our youth there's more on this topic that unites us than separates us i'm here today because i just don't understand how spending all this time and energy on these racist and divisive equity statement helped our children learn reading writing math science history and critical thinking we're seeing other similar racist messages appearing in other areas of school board approved documents the palm beach county gifted endorsement program has a line in it that says white teachers and white children they teach need to understand their position of privilege and need to understand the challenges faced by those who are
041less privileged because of race class sexual orientation and handicap conditions now you put this equity statement in opposition to systems of oppression and inequality and about wide advantage but there's one hilarious fault in your plan racism is defined as a belief that race is fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race therefore the people who made this equity statement is a racist unless you change the definition of racism the hilarious part is that if you read your biographies on the school board website you quickly realize how hypocritical this whole thing is all these people fighting for you know justice and fighting this racist system you are the system all of you sitting up there you are the system of oppression you are the system
042of inequality and you are the system of wide advantage and how do i know this because when you add up all your years of service you guys have a combined 129 years of leadership in these so-called structures rooted in white advantage that's you guys that made that decision if you were concerned about the children's education you would have held two months of workshops for forest hill community high school which ranks 11 447th in the nation maybe you should consider holding two months of workshops for palm beach lakes high school and their 21 reading deficiency and 17 math proficiency maybe you should have spent two months deliberating a statement on how the entire school district of palm beach county only has 53 average reading proficiency and 47 average math proficiency maybe instead of putting a virtue
043signal statement out you would focus on things like correcting or putting statements out about fatherless homes or single parent households was raised to believe that we are all part of one race the human race i implore you to avoid bringing racist divisive neoliberal marxist political philosophy and victimhood mentality into this level of government i implore you to focus your efforts on teaching the educational fundamentals that will help our kids on their journeys to becoming productive patriotic members of society we are one american family we are one one american family we're not divided like you guys think thank you for your time with all due respect cindy eldred laura chapman and mandy lip amanda lipke [Music] hi and thank you for letting us speak today my name is cindy eldred and i currently have three children
044attending school in the palm beach county school district and a fourth pretty soon i'm a former educator and have a family full of educators both current and retired i am a product of the florida school system i was an educator in the florida public school system and now i am experiencing florida public education as a parent a little over a week ago as i read our school newsletter i was alarmed by the wording of the equity statement the school district of palm beach county is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage i have beautiful christian children that embody all that is good and right in our world they are loving kind compassionate respectful they have good manners morals and values and their teachers would all echo that sentiment recently this divisive rhetoric has been
045spewed at them daily from all different outlets my children will never be taught to be ashamed of or apologize for who they are based on their skin color nor will they ever be taught to hate others because of theirs after watching the may 19th board meeting it was obvious to me that several of you questioned the viability of the equity statement as written many of you indicated at the meeting that you were unsure of the bold and divisive statement you were aware that it would receive pushback from parents yet you proceeded to publish it on the county website without any feedback from your constituents the school system is not the place for some of you to further your political aspirations at the expense of our children who facilitated this equity statement what facts were used
046to create this equity statement can you predict the outcomes that you believe will be achieved are they identifiable are they measurable will you challenge all the students to discover their best potential for fulfilling future or just some we need to make good decision based on facts not emotions or feeling who is accountable to explain all of the research and factual information that went into this statement the board needs to be transparent and define the specific steps that will be taken to redistribute resources and provide equitable outcomes how do you plan on identifying and quantifying these equitable outcomes you as members of the school board of palm beach county are responsible for approximately 190 000 students in our schools you're making decisions on behalf of all of our students and we expect that no students will
047be discriminated against parents deserve to know to what structures would be dismantled and why you specifically chose the word white there obviously are programs that you have in mind and have thoroughly researched in order to be so committed to dismantling them i would ask that each of you clarify what you are referring to in writing and post it on the website just like you did the statement the board's judgment is contradictory in its definition of equity and every parent should be concerned with your policy making decisions looking forward you can change the statement but you already have a predetermined agenda here in palm beach county we're a very diverse community all different nationalities and walks of life are living and working side by side you guys have an important test to ensure that students of
048all your time is up time is up we'll be successful your decisions have to be better because your decisions have consequences for all of our children hey my name is amanda lipke i am really here to talk to the parents garden guardian guardians and students the taxpayers the true stakeholders and all of this since you won't we need to continue to rally the governor is behind us and more support means less funding for this mess and more funding going towards actual tangible resources for our students and teachers i think we all agree on the need for equality and the importance of advocating for all children this is not equity equity is rooted in marxism and the mission statement is filled with the exact same jargon as other radical school districts like beaverton not focused on
049academic achievement but rather social justice if we focus solely on two words like white advantage then we are missing the bigger picture here because if you take those words away this board has still taken the leadership role on of creating a divisive and marxist agenda for our kids and even worse in a year of a pandemic they have taken an eye away from what should be the main focus and rather put that time energy and money towards crt ideology focusing on pushing in doctrine in schools by hiring a consultant from washington state to work on this equity statement holding multiple workshops at times that are not hard for us that are very difficult for us as shareholders to attend and also funding culturally responsive leadership training which is their talk for crt and is currently
050available on the teachers union website for teachers to take the board has shown where their priorities lie i am asking all parents to get involved please do your research at how crazy this stuff is i know people say here come the karen's because the white we use the white word or we're talking about white kids i have a kindergartner and a wonderful teacher my kid my entire family we are all white black and brown all different religions backgrounds gay and straight we know who we are with open minds and hearts we aren't afraid to have the tough conversations as you say and raise good kids because raising my kid is my job it is not yours i am more angry that you are not doing your job that is why i am here quit spending
051my money on this crap get world-class resources to the children and teachers equally set them up for success you have not even peaked at this job i would like to thank megan bell for the stats that have perfectly outlined how you have not peaked at this job check the reading and writing percentages you're focused on this memo why kids struggle with reading and writing why are high schools doing worse than miami-dade this whole mess is led by adults seeking some sort of racial justice and they're using our kids to get there it is time for us to redirect focus and funding thank you after laura chapman jennifer showalter jameson sotolongo and allison rampersad lara chapman good afternoon board members and dr fanoy thank you for allowing me to speak today i have heard that being
052on the school board can often be a thankless job so i wanted to show my gratitude for the time and effort that you do put in it's never easy and certainly not easy now but my reason here is to make a few comments about the equity statement specifically the line about white advantage i knew when reading that statement a few weeks ago that it would cause an uproar i study language and communication such as meaning through words implied intent as well as the misunderstandings between sender and receiver dismantling structures rooted in white advantage is ambiguous phrase perhaps purposely so it confuses people and when people become confused especially when their children are involved they become scared and when people are scared they become angry as you saw last week so i hope my comments today
053can possibly help you in the rewriting of this statement for starters ambiguity helps not one single person not you as elected board members not schools not parents and certainly not students be specific in your communication about new policy changes for example a school board in virginia voted to eliminate advanced math for the sake of equity agree or disagree at least it's specific when you offer specifics you allow parents to form a more educated decision on whether to enroll or disenroll their child from the public school system and also who and who not to elect to the school board second explain why you believe these changes need to take place why do you believe the school system of palm beach county is failing certain groups what's gone wrong and what about these structures what does the
054word structure even mean in this context why is there white advantage in this county in the first place be specific and this brings me to my last point rather than focusing the equity statement on those who you claim have white advantage why not focus on building up the communities you want to help why tear down one group to help another is that what equity is why not simply focus on the people you believe need more help and more access and tell us why we want to help remember please be specific we're counting on you as elected officials thank you um again before you start my clock i've got a copy of my speech and i'll make sure to email you it and i also have some documentation on uh numbers for the state your name
055please yes i'm jennifer chivalter you want to talk about white advantage tell that to my son back there who had to be pulled from his critical educational instruction made all the more so by his ese issues in order for us to be here since she scheduled this right before parent pickup i wish you could tell that to my west virginia coal mining great grandpa who died from black lung caused by coal dust my father was the first of his family to attend college he worked while studying dropping out for a while to earn enough to go back living off tomato sandwiches in an old trailer growing up with hand-me-down clothes sewn by his granny privilege does not come with a color privilege is a false narrative success in life comes from regardless of whatever circumstance
056you are in excellence and achievement comes from a family and community involvement where work ethics and values like personal responsibility are instilled we aren't living in 1863 we aren't living in 1963 we already have constitutional amendments and laws against racism there are still problems yet to be overcome but you are trying to deny over 60 years of substantial progress some of you spent decades on this board working in education up to 44 years so if you're saying that this there that there's this systematic illegal crisis needing to be eradicated then that's all on you your assertion is correct if your assertion is correct you've allowed employees to act in a racist manner without termination you created the policies the procedures and the selected the curriculum where's the documented evidence that completed state investigations to validate
057your assertion of systematic white advantage and racism why can't the public access that data let's talk terms equity is not the equivalent of equality equity is a critical race theory term equality is providing everyone the same opportunity receiving the same computer solid curriculum and proficient teachers it frees us to use our talents and natural desire without restrictions along with a strict work ethic to reach our potential equity on the other hand means everyone gets the same outcome whether they work hard or not have talent or not it's like a class getting assigned a test some study hard while other others go out and party they take the test the teacher comes back and says everyone has a c equity is teaching to mediocrity it is not teaching to excellence this is to distract us from
058your fostered mediocre educational system our pre-coveted 2019 scores were only 53 percent county reading proficiency palm light palm beach lakes high was at 21 worse the county math proficiency was at 47 with boynton beach community at 16 and a vomit-inducing college ready index of 28 out of 100 with palm beach lakes high at 9. so how much are we spending on our education again a whopping 3.8 billion dollars where is that money going you're teaching emotions and but yet the children can't read or write these numbers highlight our kids are struggling with basic proficiency how about you stop focusing on our skin and instead encourage and foster mindsets directed at personal responsibility and work ethic the real question the board should be asking since you've been in charge of the whole system for decades why
059can't our kids read or do math parents need to be asking why are time's up ma'am yes sir why are you still on the board thank you [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] not until i see me good ma'am i'm waiting for everybody's attention first please thank you good afternoon i'm jamison seralongo mother of two biracial children in the palm beach county school district as school board members you swore to uphold the constitution in your application along with the state of florida i'm sorry to interrupt you pull your mask up please can i get my time started again i'll start over pull the microphone up so we can hear you mark restart her time thank you good afternoon i'm jamison sottolongo mother of two biracial children as school board members you sort of hold the constitution your
060application along with the state of florida that means we the people are supposed to be considered one nation under god with equal rights for all i sat and listened to your board meeting on 4 14. miss whitfield miss quinn you both really seem to like the word embrace being part of the mission statement i hope you'll embrace what i'm about to say is with as much compassion and intention my sixth grade daughter came home with a permission slip to watch the movie the giver on friday being that this is a board-approved book i assume that you've all read it and know it well when i spoke to her principal he advised me that he had never seen the movie but approved its viewing because the board approved the book i considered myself to be an
061informed and involved parent until friday i was unaware that my daughter was reading this book because it wasn't allowed to go home with her for those that don't know this movie is about a utopian society where the past was erased from everyone's memory sounds like the current canceled culture we live in to me obedience is demanded by the elite the elite tell them what to wear eat sleep play what job they will have being for women being forced to have babies only to have them taken away raised by others they murder infants by lethal injection through their brain if they don't thrive to their standards war scenes with blood body parts flying mandatory daily vaccines to numb the independent thinking and feelings such as love joy sadness it's what they determined sameism climate control a
062reason they claim to implement utopian city do you think this sounds good so far don't be too quick to say no because in the book they'll murder you for not following the rules head of the elite stated at the end of this book people are weak when people have the freedom to choose they choose wrong every time any of this sound familiar with what we're experiencing today how is this embracing our children how is this nurturing them to achieve their dreams one kid saves the entire population shows them the truth only in this real life situation it's the parents waking up all at once and fighting back mask mom the permission slip said it's to compare and contrast plot elements in the theme in novel and film wouldn't the movie and book wonder be better
063suited for teaching equality can you read can you rename critical face um sorry you can rename critical race theory by calling it equity but we parents see through this we should be teaching our children how to build them up not how to divide them with your rhetoric you've allowed brainpop into our schools already and it's disgusting i'm not sure what else you have up your sleeves but know that we parents are woke and won't stand for it if you haven't heard yet we're coming after your seats via recalls and voting you out so don't get too comfortable up there you're creating division not equality which makes you a racist if you support this shame on all of you [Applause] go ahead ma'am good afternoon i'm alison rampersad phd 30 years plus educator in college business
064and technology in palm beach county critical race theory that's what we're talking about not about history not civics not culture not education it's about not even about learning uh literacy or skills development it's pure marxism it's divide and conquer it's rewriting our history and it's unacceptable for our children it's based in lives everybody knows that the united states didn't exist in 1619. it's undermining our children's future with indoctrination it's dividing our country's citizenry i could go on now your mission statement on your website to educate affirm and inspire each student what does that even mean three minutes doesn't give it justice but i'll do my best let's start with educate english math sex ed history pornography usual stuff oh my bad i forgot global warming our children are force-fed misinformation daily carbon dioxide it's bad
065it's bad it's harming the environment it's killing the planet biology teachers where are you humans need oxygen to live we breathe out the carbon dioxide the freeze the plants take carbon dioxide convert it back to oxygen hey oh wait a minute the children are being forced to breathe in carbon dioxide while wearing a mask for six to seven hours daily so what it's okay for the kids but it's not okay for the planet what kind of science is that next a fern what's being affirmed you're black you're white you're hispanic and your point is mission statement says each student doesn't say black white brown just students oh and parents we'd rather that you didn't know exactly what we're teaching your kids will the real racists please stand up okay on to inspire let's encourage the
066children by telling them they're victims oppressors good guys bad guys toxic non-binary you live in a racist country based on the color you're in you're never gonna get ahead because well somebody's great great grandfather had slaves and we gotta have reparations how the hell does that motivate anybody what are you people doing please look at the organizational chart that i provided for you ever seen it who's on top it's not you students parents the community that's who you work for i suggest you educate yourselves in critical race theory it's going to set race relations in this country back a hundred years bottom line this is not education it's an agenda based on hatred skin color and control children should be pulled out of any school that attempts to teach this crap kids are not born
067hating they are taught to hate you can change that stand and deliver for our children no political race theory in our schools angela salvatore david dicrenchenzo lauren ladies and gentlemen this room just understand one thing about the mask there are people that came here today that are afraid to come to the building without everybody having mass on that's why we're requiring mass in this room if you don't want to wear your mask we made arrangements for you to go to the room next door where you can certainly take your mask off but please keep in mind there are people in this room that are afraid to sit next to you if you don't have your mask on or have you come up and speak at the dice without the mask on so please keep that
068in mind when we're telling you to put your mask on state your name for the record when you come up there sir and go ahead my name is jonathan lauren i'm a parent of a five-year-old in palm beach county the only way to get hurt in today's social media fueled society is to be offended apparently being offended somehow elevates the concerns of the offended to a higher priority status well the day has come where i believe the grievance i have with the school board is so dire that i'm going to utter this phrase i am offended i am offended that our five-year-old son is being subjected to a learning environment that is less concerned with his ability to read write and reason but rather understand skin color and gender identity are what defines a person
069i am offended that because of my son's skin color he is assumed advantage therefore resources for his education will be diverted to other to others deemed more deserving based on which checked box the school board deems more worthy i am offended that the school board is so drunk with power that they believe they no longer need to hide their overt racist ideology children are not racist beings it is taught to them by those in authority but as a parent teacher be it a parent teacher family member or in this case the palm beach county school board the idea that someone is different than others based solely on the color of their skin is racist this is what i teach my child and i expect the people i entrust with my son's education to be teaching
070this as well i am all four children having a fair shot at getting equal opportunity and becoming productive member of society this cannot however come at the expense of my or any other children's opportunity i will not sit back and watch as my son is tossed aside and deemed less worthy for the educational resources for which my wife and i pay simply because he's checked the wrong box in the eyes of some bureaucrat this is wrong and the board knows it this is why they have already backed backpedaling as we speak it's too late the cat is out of the bag your stance has well been well established you can change your phraseology in your mission statement it will not change the fact that this board has disdain for one skin color over the others
071our only recourse is to vote every one of you out of your position on this board lest we raise a generation of victims and children that are defined by racial lines make no mistake we are more than ready to do so at our first opportunity the board stands beliefs and behaviors are disgusting and we should never be tolerated period with an annual budget of 3.8 billion dollars every child should have more than enough resources to learn what is paramount to getting a basic education reading writing and arithmetic at what cost is your attribution quiet sir good afternoon my name is david digretsenzo i stand before you today in this room of massless people which by the way all of you and people like you around the country created this mess but anyway i share it
072for you today as a concerned citizen and as a former candidate to sit on the very board that i am now addressing now i was not successful in my bid to be on that boy but i had an agenda then and i have an agenda now and it should be your agenda and that agenda is really simply this everybody sitting in this room the parents and students of palm beach county the parents and students around florida and around our nation you guys are dropping the ball with this kind of nonsense you talk about inequity you talk about white privilege please explain to alan west and um dr ben carson and thomas soul and candace owens and so many other successful black people who didn't have so-called white privilege they got off their butts and they
073made something of themselves because they're talented they're intelligent and they don't have to be told that they can't get ahead because of the color of their skin this nonsense around america and around the world really it has to stop it's going to start right here in palm beach county because you guys are on notice some of you are going to get elected out i believe that some of you by legal meth are going to find yourselves on the outside looking in really soon every one of you as people have said already should be ashamed of yourselves and i do want to address something that one of the first speakers said she said she referred to us me and the people in this room and most of the people in your room around the country crazed
074angry parents well you know what none of us are crazy because i think you guys are crazy for the you're doing excuse my french but we're angry and we got a right to be angry because you guys are messing with our children parents have a right and to decide how their children are going to be taught and what they're going to be taught this liberal nonsense must come to an end and that's all i really have to say i'm going to um [Music] it's because i'm going to get angry and i don't want to do that and it's and it's not for anybody that's listening but i will just say this i am very angry and i know most of these people are and we have a right to be and you guys are going
075to get the brunt of that have a nice [Applause] after this lady brevin paul king patsy davis and jordan smith going ma'am my name is angela salvatore i'm here to give a voice to those who are opposing the new agenda of critical race theory now change to equity learning about this i could not believe the subject in this agenda was about first off first off teachers have no role in teaching children children's sexual preference secondly i was horrified to learn that you want to teach our children that our white kids have advantages and are inherently racist as you call it white privilege our kids of all ages have a hard enough time feeling confident about themselves and now you want to segregate segregate our white children and tell them they are racist your program wants
076to classify divide our children and we are not going to allow our children to be treated this way i cannot believe the very people who are serving the board and our children's interests are even implementing such a program this idea will not only teach our children hate one another it also will teach our children to see capitalism as a bad idea and to teach our children welcome into socialism you want a program to change history and teach our children to hate our country and to focus only on the worst of america how it was founded your idea is to overthrow the capitalist class and bring in a socialistic society this marxism and this idea is aimed at brainwashing our children to destroy our country and i'm here to let you know that we as taxpayers
077will not pay for your marxism socialistic and racist program this is not the solution we will not sit idly by we can agree that there is work to be done on having equality for all to learn from past inexcusable actions and more can be done to help all children just a few ideas would be better busing or better choice programs for all families but your solution is not what the community wants it is shocking in how the board with the exception of mrs sanders has ignored the voices of the parents and rule in your own personal opinions and political agendas the community you continue to ignore pay for these seats and have the privilege to serve not rule in closing i need to say to the board who think that our schools are biased and
078only serve privileged children so that you're implementing this new agenda to better serve those who are unjustly treated but why should we trust you with another new agenda this progressive liberal ideology has plagued our school system long enough you need to take responsibility that our pr our problems we are facing are an outcome of this one-sided progressive and liberal control and has gone on for decades it's time that our parents take back our schools and demand that our children once again understand and are taught the constitution and to learn about america's core value we need leaders who represent every child based on race color religion gender sexual preference identity disability national origin every background so that all children will have the chance at the american dream lastly remove our masks from our children now stop
079the abuse your time's up ma'am and governor desantis governor desantis we need reverend paul king patsy davis and jordan smith good afternoon my name is paul kane and i'm here in support of the equity statement as it is currently written uh first and foremost i want to thank you for your service to the children to the families and to the wider community here in palm beach county i serve as rector of saint paul's episcopal church and day school in delray beach we have an after-school program that just celebrated its 21st anniversary with 32 haitian american children enrolled a program in which they uh received dinner and tutoring and many other resources to help them flourish i also serve as the dean of the south palm beach deanery of the episcopal diocese of southeast florida in
080which we have 10 churches and three schools i am a member of the executive board of the diocese of southeast florida i'm also a member of the south palm beach deanery's committee for racial healing and congregational histories i've served as a pastor here in south florida for over 25 years and on a personal note i am the father of a palm beach county public school graduate i'd like to share this statement from bishop peter eaton who is the bishop of the episcopal church in southeast florida and this statement is on the wording of the equity statement of the palm beach county school board the episcopal church under whose oversight there are 19 schools in southeast florida including palm beach county is very sensitive to the reality that we are living in very challenging times in
081which we are managing a great deal of change the last 15 months has have caused us all to re-examine how we live together how we relate to one another and the values by which we want to live the challenges of covid have placed unwanted but necessary restrictions on our lives and only recently due to the vaccine we are beginning to see a return to normal lifestyles where some restrictions can be lifted at the same time we have had to face the social reality that the killing of george floyd has brought so sharply into focus and the need to face the reality of who we are as a people and as a nation there is no return to pre-pandemic world either when it comes to covid or when it comes to racism in our society we
082cannot return to a worldview that denies the truth about who we have been as a nation and who we are as a people we must continue to review our history and seek ways to bind up the wounds that exist between us as fellow citizens who share a common heritage of freedom equality and justice reverend king your time is up thank you and i'm sure my congregation would love one of those timers for my sermon jordan smith for the record board chair board members and my district's representative ayala i stand here in support for the document in its current format thank you all for the hard work that you do every day and caring for our near 190 000 students and i can't imagine the stress and sleepless nights you have all navigated this year as
083you have guided our students through covet and through the renewed conversations about race in our country i have lived and worked in palm beach county in district 2 since immigrating here from scotland in i work as a pastor and as a community activist and i see the needs of our community first hand i am part of the organize against racism coalition who you've heard from some of my colleagues today i commend you for your bravery and including powerful anti-racist language in your report the school district as we have heard states its mission is to educate affirm and inspire each student in an equity embedded school system for this to happen students need to be seen and infirmed as beautiful and gifted just as they are and all and acknowledges all the things that they bring
084into the classroom with them how can we purport to provide our students with first-class education preparing them for the world if we continue to enclose a hierarchical system and a system that distorts history we must acknowledge where equity gaps exist and call them what they are the consequences of generations of targeted racist policy that disenfranchises students of color as it did to their parents and to their grandparents white advantage frames this history in a way that acknowledges this just because it is uncomfortable and we get pushed back doesn't mean it is not worth doing to conceive would be a gesture or of deference to those who would ban any form of education that is remotely critical of history or of our story as a nation we have to commit to being honest about our past
085and our present in order to recognize the dignity and worth of all students so that we may build a better tomorrow for our children and for our country board members thank you all for the work you do every day and the time that you give to our county's children i ask you to keep the original language of this statement as it is written my name is patsy davis i have five kids three have already gone through the school system two are still in the palm beach county school system since we are here discussing the equity statement i feel like we should probably look at the definition of some of these words we're talking about equity means being fair and impartial okay so impartial means that you're going to treat everyone equally okay well equal means
086the same so a true equity statement means that we should be treating everyone the same but you've not really written an equity statement because you're talking about treating children differently based on their color all this talk of dismantling structures transforming our system sharing power redistributing resources providing equitable outcome that's all a political agenda and it has no place in our schools you're teaching our children to look at social and cultural issues through a lens of race and ethnicity as opposed as opposed to a lens of hard work of opportunity they won't have equal outcomes they can't have equal outcomes they're not exactly the same person with exactly the same strengths weaknesses or interests so they won't have the same outcomes they should have the same opportunity to try to achieve those outcomes that they desire
087we should be teaching our children to strive for excellence not teaching them that they can't achieve excellence because of the color of their skin or conversely that all their hard work had nothing to do with what they've achieved because it was just given to them i'm all for equal opportunity but you don't punish into me one group a child children give to another and then expect any of those children to ever actually try to work hard or be the best that they can be you're pushing our children towards segregation where we teach treat them as part of a preset group instead of as an individual and that's exactly how they should be treated as an individual you're teaching them to judge someone based solely on the color of their skin you're asking our children to
088call each other out and reject each other based on the color of their skin we need to be uniting our children and not dividing them we need to teach them to look beyond the color of someone's skin and see the person inside you want my daughter to consider herself an oppressor of one of her best friends just because that friend happens to have a different skin color than her or worse you want her friend to think she can't accomplish anything on her own or with her own hard work because my daughter has oppressed her it's absolutely garbage and it is so hurtful to all of our children our children are a multitude of colors they are all part of the same human race and need to learn to love each other and help each other
089let them work together let them encourage and strengthen each other stop trying to divide them and tear them apart jennifer coleman blake hanley richard vascilotti good afternoon thank you for the opportunity to be heard today and for all that you do for children and families in palm beach county my name is jennifer coleman i'm a white mother of two white daughters one is an eighth grader at independence middle school my other daughter is a sophomore at william t dwyer high school i live in palm beach gardens represented by barbara mcquinn in district 1. let me start by sharing i am in support of the board's equity statement in its entirety inclusive of the language white advantage my husband and i believe and my daughters who approved this statement that it is of particular importance to
090make visible the unequal experiences families of color face in all of our systems including the education system using words like white advantage are critical to achieving the goals in the equity statement all students reach personal and academic success white advantage may be difficult for white people to hear it first which we've heard today it was for me but when i truly tried to understand its meaning i realized the truth of my advantages peggy mcintosh is unpacking the invisible knapsack lists experiences that reflect white advantage and unfortunately my black and brown co-workers friends acquaintances cannot count on most of these conditions my white skin affords me these same advantages like if i should need to move i can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that i can afford and i would
091want to live and i can be pretty sure that my neighbors will be neutral or pleasant to me i can go shopping alone most of the time pretty well assured that i won't be followed or harassed when i'm told about our national heritage or about civilization i am shown that people of my color made it what it is i can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race whether i use checks credits or cash i can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability i can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them i can swear or i can dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having a tribute
092these choices to the bad morals the poverty or the illiteracy of my race i can speak in public today to a powerful group without putting my race on trial i can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race i am never asked to speak for all of the people of my racial group i can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider i can be pretty sure that if i ask to talk to the person in charge i'll be facing a person in my race if a traffic cop pulls me over or if the irs audits my tax return i can be sure i haven't been singled out because of my race i can take a
093job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that i got it because of my race so i respectfully request the board to keep the equity statement as it is currently written so that we can move towards a just future for all of our children in palm beach county [Applause] good afternoon board members my name is blake hanley i'm an attorney a member of organizing against racism palm beach county county and i'm here as a new parent of a one-year-old child who we would like to attend palm beach school system in district four i would like to applaud the board's equity statement as originally written including the phrase the board is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage i thank you for your courage in writing this you all knew
094you would face backlash as a result of writing this but you stood on the side of truth and on the side of all of our children the term white advantages acknowledges the problem as the board is aware of the national and local research and data time and time again show disparities by race in almost every area of life including our educational system where we consistently see far better results for those who are white like myself white people of goodwill may think acknowledging the this fact itself is divisive and speaking about the truth often is but i believe we must acknowledge the fact of white advantage in order to end systemic racism in our schools and do better for black and brown students furthermore white advantage does not mean that we white people do not have
095any disadvantages it just means that white people are not disadvantaged by their race and we must be able to talk about race we must acknowledge the past and the realities of our present in order to create a new feature for all of our children i ask you keep the original language as written thank you dr richard vasilotti michelle gross emmy kenny and karen holmes hello good afternoon my name is emmy kenny and i serve on the district's diversity and equity committee on behalf of the palm beach county human rights council i also taught in the district for a few years and i was a student in the district as well so i care about it deeply and i'm here to weigh in on this issue because that's what the diversity and equity committee is for
096to weigh in on issues exactly like this um and i am urging you to stand by the statement that you carefully wrote and passed so i'm not going to stand here and try to prove to you that racism or white adventure advantage is real because you know that it is and i'm not here to convince any parents of anything because i think that would take longer than three minutes but i am here to remind you of this working towards equity is never easy there will always be resistance when school boards desegregated schools in the 60s there were a lot of angry parents who did not want that to happen luckily that didn't stop that from happening and we're at a moment in history where we are pushing towards equity and there will be resistance but
097you didn't put out the statement because someone said it was going to be easy you did it because it's the right thing to do so you have the facts you have the stats that show you that there are major inequities in this district and i applaud you for taking those head on and i would just like to echo what other people have said where the language in this equity statement is not creating division because the division is already there the division is just being named and and that's tough when we have to confront racism when we have to confront these difficult truths about our society it makes us scared it makes us have to reckon with things with reckon things within ourselves and and that's not easy to do so this is your first test
098of many the decision you make today is going to send a message to all of the teachers your staff your students and their families it's either going to say that you take this equity statement seriously and you're willing to make the difficult choices to to make those words actions and and make real change happen or you can send the message that you you don't really it's another empty promise that you are willing to bend to the will of a few angry parents rather than stand up for the thousands of students of color who need you to stand up for them you can't fix a problem if you don't name it first so that's why this is important and i think that if you go back to the facts that led you to make the statement
099in the first place you'll pass this test with flying colors thank you richard vasilati about me for 30 years i wore an american flag on my sleeve and a badge on my chest risking my life to serve all races i did it equally fairly and without prejudice now i believe there is much confusion between these terms of equality and equity nace the national association of college and employers says the term equality means providing the same to all equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances it's obvious that we do not all start from the same place but it's how we start and which path we choose to live our life on and this begins in the home school district defines equity as
100each student regardless of race ethnicity poverty gender etc will have access to the opportunities resources and support they need to imagine nurturing achieve their dreams that actually sounds like an equality definition not an equity definition as i mentioned previously an excerpt from the equity statement states the school district is committed to dismantling racism and i truly believe that every single person wholeheartedly in this room and abroad agrees with that statement are against racism the next paragraph states achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression the district is committed to dismantling structures rooted and wide advantage so your first paragraph really sounds like equality your second paragraph is committed to dismantling racism then your third paragraph goes full-blown racism blaming white people for the shortcomings
101of others you have called for the smailing of structures rooted in white advantage does this mean you want me to dismantle my children for busting their butts to be the best they can be do you want my children to stop earning the multitude of awards they receive each year would you feel better if my children acted out and got suspended and lowered those grades just so you can alter the numbers in your powerpoint for today's agenda no one will ever dismantle the way my family is the way they are raised the kindness and support my children show and give to all of their peers of all races and no one will ever dismantle my children's spirit this brought this board bringing the term white advantage into why some students excel over others is racist divisive
102ugly and frankly every board member should be utterly embarrassed to deploy such a statement not every white person has an advantage not every black or brown person has a disadvantage and racism does come in all colors racing in palm beach county should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis not a blanket statement blaming white people cbs 12 also reported the other day this board's intent to close the achievement gap what exactly does that mean it means suppressing those that excel an attempt to boost others your equity statement is a goal this board wishes to achieve however goals are to be realistic and attainable and i truly believe that this board deep down inside knows that this is not an attainable goal thank you good job state your name please hi i'm karen holm i would
103like to remind everybody that the school district uses what they call school-wide positive behavior support for the district pbs is a proven research and evidence-based method to have students behave in a way that is conducive to learning by emphasizing positive behavior and de-emphasizing negative behaviors the district has been using this system for years and years it says quote promotes fairness civility acceptance of diversity as well as mutual respect your latest equity statement however is in direct conflict with pbs to illustrate your positive system i'd like to tell you a story my boys were about two and four years old when we went to play in the kitty area at the wellington green my boys were running and climbing all over the play structures and interacting with the other children they were of all different colors
104black brown and white then i saw the black woman who was sitting next to me take out a bottle of soda pop her kids stood in front of her and pursed their lips in the air as she gave them all sips of soap pop my son stood right next to her children and he perked his lips too waiting for his turn it was absolutely adorable there was this tiny black brown skin boy with long black pearls and my kids think they're as white as whipped cream and pin straight blonde hair standing next to each other with their tiny little purse waiting for soda pop my son didn't seem color he didn't see a black mom he saw a nice lady giving soda pop it occurred to me at that moment that i had never taught
105him to see color i taught him to say nice words not hit his brother take turns play nice with others i taught him character when he got into the palm beach county schools i still did not teach him to see color i emphasized character i'm pretty sure that he knew didn't teach him to see color either he brought home all sorts of friends from school that were all different colors my boys are adults now and they have black friends jamaican friends mexican friends gay friends straight friends by friends they were never taught to see color because they only see character at home they were taught to how to interact with all others at your school your teachers promoted this positive behavior it was for everybody pbs is positive behavior support for everybody your policy of
106using pbs promotes fairness civility acceptance of diversity as well as mutual respect i encourage you all to keep it this way and continue to help raise kids like mine after the next lady speaks angelique contreras jason moreno and amanda jested good ma'am hello my name is angelique contreras and i'm a proud american of cuban and european ascent we have a race crisis that has been created in the minds of people only by the mainstream media and a few powerful yet feckless leaders in our government who must create a crisis to fix as one does not exist in today's present day our kids should be learning about math science language arts history and geography among other things kids should just be kids they are really equally influenced in schools and critical race theory in essence teaches
107them this country was founded on racism and that our whole system was being on racism this is leading them to believe that they can't be more than the color of their skin in society my co my question to you is what structures in palm beach county were rooted in white advantage where is your data that shows this to be fact the answer is you have not shown us the data to support white advantage exist in palm beach county your statement that there is white advantage is in fact racist what you are doing as a board is putting politics over our children's education you are risking the necessary federal funding that is required for our children to get the proper education they need to succeed by pushing this agenda in 2020 zinc board for children to
108stay home and deprive them of in-person learning in doing so who are the only ones to blame for their decline in academics not racial inequality a part of critical race theory shows how race has been used as a tool for those in power to stay in power and make money if that is correct that also applies to you dr fenoy and every member of this board critical race theory reveals how race has been used as a tool to create and exert power in ways that affects everyone of all races economically and politically it exposes those who have used race as a pool for their own political and economic gain what you are doing by highlighting this and pushing it on our children is solely to show your abusive power and position as superintendent and as
109school board members your focus must be on our kids and their education not the color of their skin and dividing them and i'll leave you with this passage found in the bible it is better to be a poor but wise youth than an old and foolish king who refuses all advice go ahead ma'am good afternoon i'm michelle gross i'm a parent living in district five with a daughter who graduated from dreyfus and a son who is currently a junior at spanish river as a white mom with white children i'm here in support of keeping the language in the carefully developed equity statement as is including and especially the words white advantage i want to express my gratitude for the work you do on behalf of every child in the district as our school board members
110you have a tremendous responsibility to expose our children to more than academic learning you set the stage in modeling values that create a better more humane world for all of us promoting lifelong critical thinking and learning skills your dedication is clear until a few years ago i wouldn't have thought to define myself as white that's because of white advantage i don't have to think about my race or my children's the world we live in was created with white people at the table white people represented in preschool picture books white people making decisions about curriculum in a system created long ago to educate white children if we don't take specific steps to write this injustice then we're not creating strong examples of learning from our past for our children speaking here today is completely out of
111my comfort zone and that discomfort is okay because the alternative is far worse the alternative is demonstrating acceptance of our current reality that contributes that continues to ignore white advantage and perpetuate racist systems i often question myself as a parent what can i do better what should i have done differently last night i celebrated a win and because i saw hope in a better future through the eyes of my kids i knew i needed to use my own voice and be here today they each posted on their social media support for continued anti-racism work on the day we celebrated the life of george floyd one year after his murder let's all be real let's advocate for our younger generations be role models and face the unjustness of our current systems let's stay strong grow and
112learn as a community contrite confront white advantage and work to change thank you [Applause] right ma'am good afternoon board and superintendent my name is amanda jested i am an attorney and i am a mother i have two children in palm beach county public schools and i'm here to speak with my strong support of the school board's equity statement as written including the statement that the school board intends to work to the goal of dismantling structures rooted in white advantage recognizing structural white advantage is imperative to achieve equity and it is not a moral condemnation of white people as some has suggested or of white students nor does recognize it create divides along lines of race to the contrary it should unite us there is a concept of white advantage that i think the board educators
113and fellow parents might benefit from considering i know i have as a white parent of white children imagine if you could ask a fish swimming along in our beautiful ocean how was the water fish if fish could talk i imagine the fish would say what is water the fish swimming along with no reason to notice the water it moves through structures rooted in white advantage are the water for those of us who are white who are like fish and water like my children it is not obvious or even apparent to us that we are swimming through water but that water is full of toxins and dangerous currents overt racism implicit bias structural inequities if we don't examine them and just keep swimming oblivious to the water quality we do a great disservice to all students
114these things cannot be ignored by the people who they impact and i would argue that they are toxic to all of us only white parents have the luxury of choosing not to talk to white children like my children about these toxins and dangers in the water people of color have always had to talk to their children about racism and structural inequities from a young age white parents have chosen i think in some instances without malice to teach their kids to be colorblind and many parents have advocated that idea today it sounds beautiful but it's not because it rests on structural inequities that treat white as the default it erases the feelings experiences and concerns of children who are not white we want race to not matter but the unfortunate reality is that the inequities are
115all around us the water is not going to clear up by ignoring it that is why it is necessary rather than harmful to acknowledge structures of white advantage in the equity statement and stay committed to dismantling them thank you all so much for your time your service and your thoughtful consideration [Applause] marianna blanco peter green desiree miranda and miss moreno if you're still here moreno go ahead mr murray hello my name is jaciel moreno i am an alumni of palm beach county schools my father worked there for about 10 years as a janitor i came from cuba when i was about under one year old i know all the struggles and i know that other people here have said that they've known struggles so that means basically that white advantage doesn't exist that's not the
116case it takes a lot of introspection and courage to admit that you do have an advantage and what are you going to do about it that's the next step that's very hard and a lot of people are scared and understand you know i understand that but don't you be scared by their empty threats and a lot of their talking points is really doesn't make much sense to me you know bringing in marxism and things that had nothing to do with this specific this specific topic um i am in support of keeping the statement as is specifically with the word white privilege another thing i did not like that some people have said i love that you guys included gender gender identity and sexual orientation i am gay i went through bullying in palm beach county
117schools i know how important that is they took a shot at it as much as they could on three or four comments those parents don't care about students in palm beach county they don't care about all of them they only care about theirs and theirs being taught the way that they want them to be taught so that they can perpetuate all their hate don't you please don't be swayed by any of those comments please understand that we need you to stand strong we need you to please continue on in your mission for equity because without you we can't do it alone we we cannot i'm glad that you put it out and now is not the time to backpedal now is not now is the time to push forward if all of these parents students
118were actually here to speak for themselves i don't believe that they would share all the same views so therefore you need to really i plead with you to please stay on this track to continue with this statement not make any changes everything that is in here is very progressive and i know it's a bit scary but this is the future of palm beach county palm beach county is diverse it has a lot of different ethnicities including cuban americans and i think that we all deserve a chance at equity and a lot of people are not afforded that as you can see by the graphs by the data that they posted the the scales are tipped in the wrong direction basically so please be strong please keep it the way it is thank you so much
119for all you do [Applause] hey please please stop good ma'am good afternoon my name is marie blanco and i am the assistant director at the guatemala my center i became involved with the escuelita maya when i was 15 years old and quickly learned that there was a gap between the community and the systems in place that serve our community susely 16 years old from guatemala a recent arrival who fled from domestic violence and poverty to reunite with her dad is now a member of our community facing struggles that the majority of us can't even fathom as a 16 year old she should be focused on applying to colleges finding a dress for prom yet her worries are finding a job to pay her debt in guatemala so the gangs don't murder her her family and
120to fix her immigration case in order to stay with her dad and be reunited she's a bright child who is behind because she's in a foreign country she doesn't speak the language and she's trying to catch up with all the other life stresses stressors that add to her education i mentioned suse but she is just one of the recent examples of students who make part in the palm beach school district equity for society matters guiding parents through the school system is nothing new for us and through the years we fostered relationships with the schools in lakewood and learned from the staff and leaked from learn from the staff in one of our local high schools that the percentage of english learn learners to graduate are one out of two a fifty percent chance there's no
121use of saying that we care about the students if we're not acknowledging all of the outside factors affecting their lives in education racism is very real poverty is very real discrimination is very real the staff and administrators in the surrounding schools are nothing short of incredible and are trying to meet the needs of our families and understanding how we could bridge the gaps in the systems yet they are bound by the structure of the institutions at the center our outreach staff fulfill the indispensable role meeting and guiding new arrivals among the thousands of families that we serve each month we have about twenty indigenous employees mostly speakers of cancun whose skills are in cultural competency but for whose generation the school district could not enroll what difference does it make if the teachers show respect
122for the home and families if people can't recognize the difference between unity and uniformity acknowledging the apart the importance of equity and past structural failures of the school system is the first step towards reaching real change we at the guatemala my center stand by the school board's equity statement and critical race curriculum and are committed to helping the school district and all the areas that we are capable of thank you guys for your work and thank you for having us today hello my name is desiree miranda i'm here to speak against the equity statement i'm latina half colombian half puerto rican my husband's cuban our country has come so far so far from labels and segregation the usa is the least racist country in the world and the perfect example of that is barack obama
123if our country was so racist how did he get elected not once but twice let's celebrate how far we've come as a country yes our history is ugly but what country is it let's learn from those mistakes not erase them i am not okay with being labeled as a person of color that's racist my son's high school sent out an email to have virtual meetings to talk about racism as parents we have to check we had to check off if we were a person of color or a white ally i've never been so offended being a hispanic america being a hispanic american woman i didn't want to check anything off i'm a parent we're all parents i don't want to be labeled as a person of color and i don't want white allies i don't
124need white allies we are all one ultimately we are a product of the choices we make in life instead of pushing this divisive language let's focus on making sure all schools have the same resources things that will actually make a change stop pushing victimhood we are americans we are all one human race peter green desiree miranda jill wells james wells that was desiree marianna blanco peter green jim wells james wells you here myra demongo david king father frankel loughlin glad any of you come up to the podium it's fine hello hi good sir good afternoon uh i sent yesterday a 16 ph paper on proposing a critical thinking course to unteach racism and because we i think it's common knowledge that racism is taught at home indirectly or directly through cues and given the fact
125that teachers and principals meet with students roughly in a on a weekly basis for 10 months it would seem to me that they could be a real positive influence as it relates to teaching critical thinking i think critical thinking is i think we all can agree is a miss in today's environment when um and i'm not being political i'm independent but for example 56 percent of republicans today believe that trump won the election when in fact trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president uh in history at 37 percent so it would stand to reason uh particularly after he fired his head of election security kris krebs the day after the election when krebs said the day before that the election was the most secure in history so i think as a
126critical thinker we can understand that there was not good faith by the former man but having said that i think critical thinking would also be applicable and helpful with today's problem of gun control gun violence today we had a mass shooting in san jose multiple people were killed i think it's high time that gun control be addressed and i think children are very uh amenable to thinking practically and without bias and so therefore i believe critical thinking again could help in that regard i would also like to propose uh two adjunct courses in conjunction with critical thinking because uh as it relates to unteaching racism and the reason for that is a dialogue needs to be created it just can't we just can't have enough to say in our curriculum uh stop asian bias stop
127asian these are buzz words we have to um devote time to making individuals think differently and in conjunction with that i think i'm 62 and i was born in 58 so i've seen a couple of generations and i think what's also missing in today's society is the art of manners i mean manners and the art of conversation and i think if we can instill that in children [Music] a better dialogue will will occur a better approach to potential employers the punch potential guidance counselors your time is up okay thanks thank you thank you jim wells james wells turn the camera on in the other room please i believe mr mrs wells are in that room yes we are good ma'am uh first of all um i don't have any children in the palm beach county
128school system our youngest son just graduated from west boca last year and was part of this uh homeschooling stuff and that right off the was a first class joke all right they didn't do anything for him and as far as what you're trying to shove down these kids throats is this critical race theory you're wrong it's not your job to teach our kids about race it's ours as the parents your job is to teach them the basics reading writing arithmetic and teaching socializing so they can make it in the world out there just like we do this stuff that you're trying to force down our kids throats is not good we don't see race as parent i don't see race my husband is a 21-year veteran of the united states army and i am a
129state representative with the florida national guard i am unit frg in charge of family readiness okay and we do not see race in the military we see brothers and sisters in arms what you're trying to indoctrinate with our kids is wrong if you want to play politics this is not the arena you get out of the school board if you want to get on politics go run but do not shove this stuff down our kids throats you have no right to do this you have no up you have no idea what you're doing to these kids you're wrong on everything that you're doing and i have one to say to you all you're fired [Applause] go ahead sir state your name uh james wells you just talked to my wife and yes i'm a 21-year
130us army veteran i retired in january 2018. i during my time in service i served with all my brothers and sisters we had one mission and that was to get to get the mission done you get it accomplished and do what we had to do we never saw a race we never saw color we never even saw religion we all saw simply we were brothers and sisters for all the same calls teaching our kids race in school is wrong and it should not be taught at all and with that said you guys need to go back and learn how to how we americans feel how to teach our kids that we all need to get along as americans as a mass thing i don't see a point that our children should have any kind of
131mass to be worn it at all you have no right to say our children should have to wear a mask there is no physical proof of a pandemic all of this a simply over exaggerated flu of you simply trying to control the american population and make us do what you wanted to say it's not about control it's not about what you want it's what the people want and what we are and with that said the only other thing i have to say for you is that you're all fired fire desiree miranda myra demongo david king and father frankel laughlin good ma'am good afternoon my name is mario domingo and i'm from a small town in guatemala called hakaltenango where the most common language is popte i'm up to the united states at 15 years old
132in guatemala only rich people go to school and have a career and my mom and dad wanted us to have a better future when i moved here i went straight into high school not knowing any english and not having any anyone to guide me through the school system my first three years were okay but when i went into my senior year i lock guidance on how to graduate or go to college senior year i failed all my tests and nearly didn't pass my senior year year until i retook the sat and was able to get my diploma right after i graduated i began working at a restaurant where i stayed as late as i 1am every day to help support my family of seven i still struggle speaking english and i knew i wanted to
133work somewhere else i wanted to help children who had similar experience to me i began practicing my english by myself with phone apps and by watching movies a friend of mine was a teacher and she contacted me about a position open at lakewood middle school in the school district as a pub clf translator i was interviewed as soon as offered a position the pay was really low but i wanted to work with the with them to help the children who were struggling like i did i started to work with the school district in october 2019 and they introduced me to a group of kids who could not write or read in english or spanish i had to work with them daily from teaching them to write their names to encourage them to graduate high school
134instead of entering the workforce at 15 years i know we all work so hard to help these childrens thought but a lot of support and it often felt like they system had forgetting about them when i had arrived in the united states my mom enrolled us in a youth group for teenagers at the guatemalan maya center so we had a place to belong i had fallen in love with the program seeing how they helped people out with everything they could when i saw the work that they were doing i told myself that i wanted to work with them in the in the future i need i needed to provide the same services that they were providing me and my family it was a dream come true to work with them and now i'm i know
135that i am with the outreach program i see how many families come to us because they don't understand basic things about their children's school or their education system works our parents know that the guatemalan maya center is always here to support them and we're happy to see that with the equality statement the school district is showing that they were here to support them too we need to make a change thank you remember the board chairman thank you for this honor um i'm franco lochten and i'm the at the guatemalan maya center i have a history of 50 years of worrying about the children of the workforce in palm beach county and martin county it became a kind of a career and at times i've been a nuisance to you people and to the work you
136do i don't know if you remember can you remember when a migrant child would spend three years in the first grade and never make any progress through no fault of their own you have done miracles transforming the system and what you have undertaken with this statement is the most beautiful and promising thing you make an old guy cry i was in next county at martin county struggling three years with the school board and lovely people though they were eventually had to give up and found a little school do you think i wanted to go out and found a school separate from the system but i had to go out and find hope rural school in in the county to take care of the kids you've what you've undertaken here we can talk all day about
137languages the languages of philosophy psychology modern science and sociology that we can use to talk about this there can be arguments about the words but there can be no arguments about the disposition of what you have undertaken and there can be no argument about the era in which you have stepped up and done it we need we need all of us to do as much for one another as you have done for us here we need to speak to the reality the truth of our past and present and the future that is possible and achievable before us so for this i thank you and endorse you god bless david excuse me david king carl muhammad ezekiel edmunds iii and charmaine possible good good evening board chair or good morning good afternoon board chair um board
138members and everyone in your respective places superintendent and everyone in your respective places i stand in full support of the equity statement as it has been approved while i understand the statements that can be found within this within the equity statement the work was done went out to the community and then was approved the reason why the equity work was done was not only because it was necessary it was to change the precedent that is currently set while i am disgusted my notes came up sorry about that while i am disgusted that we are here today i am pleading that the statement stay as it is appeasing one set of the community today without educating the community that is ignorant of the topic is dangerous today one group will win tomorrow will the opposing group
139have a chance as much as we use the word equity as much as we say we want to see the equity work this is it this is the equity work and as we like to say we see you the rest of my time i'm going to read a few comments from the equity committee members of the equity committee sue davis killing goku's down syndrome organization and this was passed through staff i would like to see the phrase in question white privilege remove not because i think there's anything wrong with it but because i feel that one phrase would distract from the very important work with we have to do with the equity let's not give the racial inequity deniers any ammunition to sidetrack the efforts racial mondaser in order to achieve the vision that the
140school district of palm beach county has the children will be embraced affirmed and inspired the school district must be steadfast intentional and committed to understanding how systemic racism has created barriers that are contributing to the achievement gap the disparities that we are seeing in the achievement gap are from systems that are impacted by bias under representation and unequal access to opportunities the time to take action to dismantle these systems and structures that are rooted in equity is now kimberly square o esc advisory committee i disagree with the mob and believe as a privileged white person that the original language acknowledging the non-white students face educational disadvantages and additional struggles should stay marcia guthrie west palm beach and naacp we are at a critical juncture in our nation our state and right here in the public
141school district we send our most valuable treasures our children to learn this is a time where if i may just finish the statement quickly thank you this is a time where leadership absolutely matter and bold policy and direction is a must if we cover now the pressures of doing what is right what our children deserve what we will tell them in the future how will we answer the question vice president harris reese when we when she stated years from now this moment will have passed and our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and ask where were you when the stakes were so high they will access what was it like and we would tell them we would tell them not just how we felt we would tell them what we did and
142i'll send the rest of the documents to the board directly thank you thank you carl mohammed ezekiel edmonds iii are you here all right board members that that takes care of everyone i think that's here to speak um in person we do have 70 recorded messages that will take us approximately one hour and 53 minutes to listen to so if the it department would start running those for us please my name is claus bell i have children three children in the district i'm a white resident of palm beach county and i believe that we need to leave the equity statement as is we need to leave the language about white advantage in there um for the reason that i think it's important for the schools to take on racial equity in a serious way and
143doing that requires being honest about the current state of affairs because there's no way for us to move forward as a county as a state and really as americans without acknowledging the way things have been which is that white people have a leg up in our society in a million different ways um and i think you know for us to move forward as a multicultural society in the modern age we're going to have to deal with that and so i think it's important for the school to say for the schools to face that honestly so i'm calling in favor of keeping the equity statement as is and i would i would not support changing it at this time thank you bye hello my name is christian d cersei jr i am a resident of district
144one of the school board area and i just want to call and make sure that you hear my support that i would like to retain the white advantage words in the in the mission as it is written as a white parent i do believe it is important for us to get an accurate view of history and not try to gloss over things that have happened in the past that may not be the most flattering to us i think the only way we learn and grow into people is if we both understand our history and are willing to admit any mistakes that we may have made in the past nobody's perfect it doesn't mean they're in any way evil but the only way we can make sure that we avoid repeating the same mistakes is to
145at least learn what mistakes we have made in the past so again i want to retain the language as is written thank you hello my name is jackie watts and i would like to speak on the equity statement i'd like to tell the board that this is not an easy fix as ms ayala pointed out all of you had agreed ahead of time to stand firm in your convictions because you knew it was a bold statement saying that we parents don't understand what you mean by structures rooted in white advantage is complete horse manure to pretend that you don't know what critical race theory is is hilarious you are either some of the best actors i've ever seen or you have no idea what's going on in the school system across across the country placing
146such a focus on the theory that white people are born into advantage shows white people in a negative light to children and then going a step further and not only telling kids that white people are born better than you but that you also have to take away any advantages they might have is teaching kids to be racist this statement that you added in this is racist last week you seemed upset because you were called communist and marxist because the statement that you all put together is just that equity is an attribute of being fair and impartial but it goes the extra mile kamala harris in one of her campaign ads on equity versus equality because they are not the same says equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place she also points
147out that to end up at the same place we all need to start at the same place aka stripping people of their individual rights now systems rooted in wide advantage according to your racial equality institute training means that all white people have enjoyed special advantages since before they were born and that they are still reaping the rewards of racial preference to recap saying that you will be proactive in dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and then redistributing resources is at its core marxist ideology instead of teaching children that they all have inherent value and that their character and virtue matter more than anything on earth even their skin color you want to teach them that their value and identity is solely based on the color of their skin i can't possibly see anything more divisive
148than that lastly i request that you please get those racist brain pop videos out of our children's lives they don't need to learn politics at school moral developments if you cannot see the damage you are doing to our society by targeting the innocence of our children i have no choice but to remove my three children from the palm beach district schools my name is leaving a comment for the equity workshop meeting i would like to say that i went to school in palm beach county from 1985 to 1993 and during that time i had not noticed any structure that would not have provided equal opportunity for all students in fact there is and was plenty of guidance resources and opportunities for those students who wish to succeed in their own direction if they desire to
149do so no matter their skin color religion or status do you want to know why it's because they weren't told by the school board that they were less than that they were oppressed and victims of society and that one particular race held all the power to prevent their success in life achievements will be lessened among students with this equity statement implemented in fact just in case you don't know libraries still accept all people and they are free as well as many resources online so if you have the desire to succeed no matter what race or status you are you will succeed because you have that drive now making one group a victim based on their skin color and making another group the blame group is not how you empower people believe that they are successful
150already they have what it takes and they have the will and desire to make their dreams a reality the way of thinking of a victim is damaging the children they walk into schools thinking that they don't have what it takes and being told that they're oppressed this is the mindset you want do you think they're somehow at a disadvantage and have been all this time based on the color of their skin i see a major problem with that one will never achieve success accepting a role as a victim and blaming another for their lack of achievement empowerment never casts blame or plays the victim you and only you are responsible for your success and achievement you cannot raise your value of self empowerment and success on one hand while demonizing and holding blame and accusing
151another or a school system as the reason you didn't succeed this does not build character let's go back to the content of people's character and not the color of their skin one must also consider the amount of mixed race families and children in the district what will a mixed race child think about this his or her parents if they each have different ethnicity if you haven't noticed we live in the 21st century and many families are now mixed and blended howard good morning to the school board of palm beach county my name is marisa severn and i am a mother of two children in a palm beach county school district i am speaking on behalf of the equity topic on the agenda today i'm calling in opposition to the equity statements recently discussed to implement
152in palm beach county school district as a former californian for the majority of my life i have watched the destruction of the school district and state there in two rooms by implementing these marxist ideals i do not believe that the school district that it is the school district's place to bring race and division into my home it is my job to teach my children how to be a kind loving and accepting human beings you are creating creating division instead of healing it by bringing these equity statements into the school district we are opening the door and allowing these super far leftist marxist ideals into our county in california children are taught about sex race and hate in kindergarten in kindergarten they are sick they just love each other at that point and you are teaching
153them to hate as a teacher in an after-school private sector i watched my students become more and more brainwashed and hateful towards each other by learning all of these ideals you are teaching them to hate instead of teaching them to love one another help one another and encourage one another to be their best self encourage them to work hard to earn their achievements reward them based on their ethics and hard work teach them skills to be successful in the future don't let them play the victim card that's a disservice to everybody teach them to be strong to be confident mentally and emotionally balanced individuals teach them to be team players while also learning healthy competitive individual skills this is what our youth needs not your political agenda hi my name is ashley labad i work
154in the charter section of palm beach county the one section that is disrespected probably most maybe because charter schools tend to do better than public schools let's talk about ethics before equity you are unethical preaching white privilege to teachers staff and students is not okay you are telling these kids they can't achieve anything unless they are white stop just stop how about promoting you can do anything you set your mind to if you truly truly want to get that get it life is what you make of it and if you put in the hard work you can get there if my students knew what you were pushing they'd be appalled why don't you spend the last few weeks in our classrooms and i don't mean just five ten thirty minutes spend the whole day and
155see that racism is being pushed by you not them do the right thing and stop this equity nonsense my students do not want to hear it anymore i do not want to hear it anymore i should not be scared to speak up as a teacher other teachers should not be scared to speak up please know that my students judge by character and many of them are mixed and to tell them that you have to be white to achieve something in life is telling them they don't have to fight for it please stop this now and get it together thank you so much for your time have a good day hello board members my name is victoria gates i am a grandmother of students in palm beach county and i am calling to give you some
156food for thought on this equity workshop that you're doing today when i was a student back in the 1960s our government worked very hard to remove segregation from our communities and make sure our students were all together in school together and sharing as peers and making friendships my mother marched against the busing to keep us out keep us in our communities and keep us from being bussed into another one it happened anyway it was the beginning of a wonderful movement of our students becoming peers versus seeing each other in color i am very confused by this new equity statement and what you're trying to do in the schools today because to me it appears that you're going backwards and that you're trying to segregate our students based on color once again why are you trying
157to take apart what has taken so many years to be improved this is needless we don't need to do it and instead of just changing the words you need to change the entire program i hope you consider this seriously and have a wonderful rest of your day thank you for your time good morning i am pastor ray whiteley an organizer with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than one thousand member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural nonpartisan network of congregation and community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unifi in our support for
158the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our systems by hearing and elevating unprecedented voices sharing power and recognizing and eliminating bias while distributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you hi my name is julie damskur i know you guys don't want to use colon comments very heavily after last day you made a decision without listening to all the phone calls but um because you set these meetings up at a very inconvenient time for a working parent i am unable to attempt to die i just would like to say that i find your mission statement and um your equity statement is very damaging very um i mean i don't know how anyone
159could have a client or not after what it was previously um i really would like to learn more about what this curriculum is and what you're going to be jamming doing our children's lives also i it doesn't matter what topic you're talking about going forward you have the parents attention if you decide you want to change food on the menu at school we will be there listening commenting dissecting you because we have zero faith zero trust that you actually care about our children thank you good morning my name is trinetta rutherford with space in florida we are part of faith in action with more than 1 000 member institutions representing 1 million families and 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith of florida is to build a powerful multicultural nonpartisan network of congregation
160community organizations in florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity to unify in our support of the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transformation forming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable and equitable outcomes thank you good morning i'm krista thompson with faith in florida we are part of facing action with more than 1 000 member institutions representing 1 million families and 150 cities in 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multi-multicultural non-partisan network of congregational community organization in
161florida that would address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county and solidarity with unified in our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white effort advantage and transforming our system by hearing and evaluating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you good morning my name is evangeline ward with faith and foul florida we are part of faith action with more than 1 000 members institutions representing 1 million families and 150 cities in 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-protestant network of congregation community organizations in florida that
162will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for all of our families we stand with palm beach county and solidarity with unified and our support for the school board a palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our countess public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantages and transforming our systems by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating values and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcome for all thank you very much rebecca miller and i'm calling the basic equity workshops um i would prefer for the teachers and the school system to get back to teaching math english and things that are needed not a division between white and black i'm having a real issue with this that this has been taught at school
163we need to get away from that i'm seeing that y'all are putting a division between our children at each other i've had children come home and crying to me that how horrible that we are that because we're white people i'm tired of it and this must stop and it is not the teacher's place to bring this to the children and make children feel bad because they're white this must stop this is cruelty this is i can't even believe that i'm living in this present time that that we would be doing this spending home children crying thank you yes my name is tiffany young and i'm calling to speak and labor recorded message on the equity program i raise a hispanic grandchild i have three biracial grandchildren this is teaching hate and division within families this
164is causing so much damage and has absolutely no place in our school system you are dividing families you are causing conflicts between families you are there to educate our children you are there to teach them their basic needs and to educate them on math reading spelling science history not things that belong in the household spoken about this needs to end now this once again has no business being in our schools thank you my name is nicole tercia and i'm a concerned community member in palm beach county i am aware of and continually learning about my advantages as a white woman the school district of palm beach county's equity statement as is is a bold declaration and the language dismantling structure is rooted in white and managed to remain in a statement i do not believe
165that we can dismantle racism and systematic oppression if we do not also confront white advantage which fosters and perpetuates these systems if we take out the language regarding weight advantage we are not confronting ourselves our history and the systems of oppressions inflicted on marginalized communities i know many white people don't believe weight advantage exists they think i'm also struggling i've had a difficult way how can i have weight advantage no one is trying to say that you are not struggling or to lessen the impact of your experiences but you still have advantages many of them unrecognizable to you that enable you to navigate the world without fear and consciousness that the color of your skin impacts health how others perceive and treat you when i walk through the aisles of my local food store i
166see bleaching creams marketed to light and dark skin why do you think that is why are black people taught that they are not worthy as they are that they should be something other and why are all of us regardless of skin color thought that weight is right families communities churches businesses financial institutions government healthcare law enforcement housing prisons and schools societal systems all intertwined perpetuating racism and impacting generations it is a continual cycle and we aren't willing to call it out our european ancestors came to this country with many good intentions a chance to succeed and create new life for themselves but at what cost the truth is that this country and all its strength was founded on genocide and slavery even as our constitution established freedom for eastern european white people and even after
167slavery ended on the books we continued to experience the ripple effects today white people have the luxury of not noticing these ripple effects and that is weight advantage which is why the district's language should remain as is board members please be brave and keep the language as is and community members and open your hearts to learning something new about yourself our shared history and what people other than you are experiencing good morning i'm chebron with southern florida we are part of faith in action with more than one thousand member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities in 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we
168stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unity and our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equity outcomes thank you good morning my name is laura duffy i'm a mother of three in jupiter and i'm calling regarding the equity workshop today or critical race theory that is being introduced to our schools i'm shocked and appalled that anything that's being taught in our schools accepts love and acceptance and that the skin color is only a matter of difference of melanin that is all i cannot believe that the educators on the
169board actually think that this is okay to teach our children anything that is divide and hate should not be part of the curriculum whatsoever the only thing that should be taught i repeat again as love and acceptance of all people in one human race i'm sitting here with my baby and i cannot believe that we are actually having this conversation it makes me think that the people on the board are not fit to serve our children i hope you make the right choice and change the curriculum to love and acceptance of all good morning school board members i am calling in regards to the equity statement i'm miss taylor i am a white mom of a 14 year old student of the school district of palm beach county i'm calling in support of the equity
170statement as is the problem is many white parents do not truly know what white advantage is they don't understand the language or the terminology it's the fact that i don't have to have the talk with my son about keeping his hands ten and two on the steering wheel if approached by a police officer in order to keep him safe and alive i don't worry when i'm followed in a store they're usually trying to upsell me they don't think i'm trying to steal something i'm not looked at every day and judged based on the color of my skin i don't have to think about the color of my skin every day i don't worry that my sun will be bullied because of the color of the skin my child can easily see himself in books because
171the pictures and stories are vastly based on white culture i don't worry about being treated differently by the police by doctors or nurses because of the color of my skin i don't have to talk to my son about he how he will be treated based on the color of his skin that is my advantage i didn't ask for it but it's mine because i'm a white woman thank you hi my name is kara jennings i'm the parent of two children in palm beach county my son will be entering third grade at highland elementary school i'm going to make a comment regarding the equity statement that the school board released i fully support the equity statement i think the term white advantage should remain in the statement i think the statement very clearly addressed the issues
172that we face in this county as a white person with two white children who my neighborhood school is a majority non-white school i meet families all the time who are concerned about sending their child their white child to a school that does not have the advantage of having a majority white students as there is a perceived and a real advantage to schools that benefit from having more white students due to the economics and the white privilege that come along with that i think the school board statement very clearly addressed this issue and the need to make changes so that this inequity does not continue i hope the school board members will stick to their guns keep the statement as it is and allow us to move forward as a county and a community to address
173the inequity that is prevalent in our school district thank you good morning we're going dr jared pickling president of the palm beach county clergy alliance on the agenda item concerning the palm beach county equity statement we the clergy of palm beach county stand in solidarity with unify in faith in florida as well as organized against racism in our support that the school board of palm beach county equity statement remains as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating unprecedented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes we stand in solidarity because it's necessary for the well-being of all of our students i want to say that as clergy we understand
174that the well-being of our kids is paramount so when we understand when we eliminate bias and eliminate advantages that should not be there it makes it an even playing field for all and we achieve the equity that we also desire thank you so very much good morning i'm juliet knight with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than one thousand member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with the unify in our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is
175it is imperative that our counties public school system is committed to dismantling instructors rooted in right advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you hi my name is todd lavogue i'm a 53 year old white male and a teacher in palm beach county schools i think the new equity statement that you have created is important it needs to stay as is keeping the phrase white advantage in the statement is important and um i just wanted to let you know as a again as a white male i do think that this phrase is important to remain in the equity statement um and it's important that we uh we address this issue of systemic racism in our society thank
176you good morning i'm christy ward with faith in florida we are part of a faith in action with more than a thousand members institutions representing 1 million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural nonpartisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause property for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unified and our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating under represented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you have a
177great day good morning i'm angela jackson with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than 1 000 member institutions representing 1 million families and 150 cities in 17th state the mission of faith in florida is to build powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unify and our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating unrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and rig in redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you hello my
178name is heidi rabinowitz and i am a white resident of palm beach county i am an educator and i am very concerned to hear that the board is considering dropping the term uh white advantage from the equity statement the equity statement was beautifully thoughtfully crafted it is a very important uh guide to future policies and behaviors within our schools and it absolutely should remain as written i urge you not to give in to pressure from people who don't actually understand the purpose of this statement who and their fearful response is a clear indicator for the need for this statement itself so please stand firm and do not revise this very well written equity statement thank you so much good morning i'm vivan peace with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with
179more than one thousand member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty's poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unify and our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling the structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our systems by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you good morning my name is emily bailoff and i'm a parent twin second graders in this district and i'm calling
180in support of leaving the verbiage in the equity statement as is and i will read it now the school district of palm beach county is committed to dismantling racism and other systems of oppression and inequity achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression the school district of palm beach county is committed to dismantling structures rooted in wide advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevated under underrepresented voices i am a white jewish american and the enabling of an elevation of the voices of racist bullies is clear not only in our community but within our nation and that can be evidenced by what was the insurrection of our capital back in january i find it absolutely intolerable that the voices of racist bullies were
181in fact elevated for seven hours straight at last week's board meeting we have to continue to teach our children that the voice that the words and the tone of our voices matter and that they clearly do damage evidenced in fact by the horror of many of the events including the insurrection that occurred in the last 15 months we have to continue to teach them that the first amendment is the right for all of us and last week it was made clear by these verbally abusive bullies that not everyone's concerns were valid enough to be heard without booing in the background and bullying of the people who spoke those very words and concerns abusing the first amendment right in the middle of a deadly pandemic with this anti-mass anti-doctor crusade and enabling these anti-massacres who to
182believe that they have the right to scream yell pitch fits and verbally attack public officials is a slap in the face to the founding fathers of our constitution last week marjorie taylor green compared mask and vaccine mandates to the treatment of jews by nazis during the holocaust and i am absolutely outraged because i heard the same anti-massacres also referenced nazi germany more than once during both school board meetings in the last two weeks for these parents to compare public health measures intended for to protect the public from the consequences of a deadly virus to any part of the horror that was the holocaust is insulting to any part of the horror that was the holocaust is insulting to every single jew who perished and i am very concerned hi my name is angela sanchez knutson
183i would like an explanation as to what the definition of white advantage is what do you consider white advantage with that being said all students should be given the same opportunities and be treated the same no matter their ethnic background and or skin color that is to be applied to all students no special treatment to a particular race or ethnicity minority or not this should be applied in the classroom and in all sporting activities all students should be able to follow their ambitions dreams and move ahead based on their strengths i am extremely disappointed about the terminology used in the equity statement with a panel of intelligent people you decide to use race and divisive language to state all students should be treated equal there was no need for any race fading there is no
184place for racial discrimination in any manner in our education system and in society by using racial terminology you are creating more racism in our society please help us parents and the community understand what the changes are what does this look like and what is the plan please consider changing the equity statement to be more inclusive for all students thank you good morning i'm stacy davis with faith in florida we are part of the face action with more than a thousand members institutions representing 1 million families in 150 cities in 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural anti-partisan network of congregation community community organizations in florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with
185unify in our support for the school board of palm beach county equally equality statement as is it is imperative that our county school board system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in which white advantage in transforming our system by hearing and elevating unrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating buyers and redistributing sources to provide equitable outcomes thank you very much good morning i am tanya lopez with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than one thousand member institutions representing one million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with
186unify in our support for the palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in wide advantage and transforming our system by hearing and alleviating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminated bias and also redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you very much for your time and have a good day good morning my name is pastor richard dames organizer with faith in florida we're part of faith in action with more than one thousand member institutions that represents one million families in over 150 cities in 17 states we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unify in our support of the school board of palm beach county equities statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is
187committed to dismantling structures that is rooted in wide advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating biases along with redistributing resources to provide equitable outcome thank you good morning i'm cheryl bruns with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than a thousand members representing 1 million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregation community organizations in florida that will address systemic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our families we stand with palm beach county in solidarity with unifying in our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling
188structures rooted in wide advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating for bias and redistributing resources to provide equal to provide um resources to provide its equitable outcomes thank you hello this is nicholas gubitas i live in west palm beach please keep the equity statement as it is written if you fail to recognize that there is such thing as white privilege then you will miss the mark on any equity statement white privilege and wide advantage are facts of this country they are part of the foundation of this country it was started to benefit white people the laws were written to benefit white people the police were formed to work for and benefit white people the infrastructure was developed and built on the backs of labor which was
189not from white people if you are trying to make an equity statement then you must accept this reality please do not allow an anti the ante naysayers to convince you otherwise they have opinions we have facts please pass the equity statement as it is written including this controversial white advantage and white privilege hopefully it will no longer be controversial to accept facts in the future if you pass this thank you good morning i'm jamiro wright with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than 1 000 member institutions representing 1 million families in 150 cities in 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural nonpartisan network of congregations community organizations in florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that cause poverty for our
190families we stand with palm beach county in south solidarity with unified in our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advances and transforming our system by hearing and elevating undisrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and undistributing resources to provide effortable outcomes thank you good morning my name is dr linda collimore the courtyard of palm beach county stand in solidarity with unified as well as faith in florida in our support for the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it's imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures that are rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented minorities sharing
191power recognizing and eliminating bias and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes thank you so much good morning my name is annie isla i'm a resident of the glades and i'm calling in support of the current school district of palm beach county equity statement as a member of the glaze and of organizing against racism the palm beach county alliance i am calling upon the school board of palm beach county to hold the current mission and vision statement which is a representation to the commitment of equities for student success the school district of palm beach county states that its mission to educate a firm and inspire each student in an equity embedded school system what does it mean to have equity embedded school system as the system that is unwilling to address the realities of what caused
192an equity this entails educating every student about all facets of history and inequities and how structural policies and laws have affected life outcomes for blacks indigenous and people of color how can we purposefully provide our students with a first-class education in preparation for the effective contributions to the global stage if we continue to enclose and defend hierarchy and oppressive systems that distort history we must acknowledge that equity gaps between student based on race and ethnicity ethnicity and income persist and thrive at the most institutions and specifically in education and as a greatest resident i have seen this firsthand the very premise to which our educational system is built has created division and advantage primarily on prolonged racial minds a acknowledging and affirming the ripple effects of conservation equity and education is one step towards realizing
193an equity embedded system as the school district's newly adopted statement envisions equity center policies and practices must be incorporated into the school district learning strategy as well as initiatives and policies exactly that aid in the reduction of equity gap we must talk about race race mutual efforts not only harm our black and brown children but it harm every student because it creates ignorance towards others so therefore i'm asking that we keep the language as is and i thank you for this opportunity good morning i'm a re-round tree with faith in florida we are part of faith in action with more than 1 000 members institutions representing 1 million families in 150 cities and 17 states the mission of faith in florida is to build a powerful multicultural non-partisan network of congregations community and organizations in
194florida that will address systematic racial and economic issues that causes properties for our families we stand with palm beach county and solidarity with unified and our support for the school board of palm beach county statements as is it is imperative that our county's public school system and is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing powerful recognizing and eliminating bias and redis redistributing resources to provide adequate outcomes thank you my name is pam weisbrod i'm a resident of jupiter and i have two grandchildren in the public school system in palm beach county i'm calling on the topic that the board is currently considering i'm very upset that the board is considering removing the phrase white advantage from this carefully crafted equity statement the board
195spent a considerable time workshopping this and this phrase is important as it underlines the the root causes of the lack of equity in our school system for the board to cave into a radical group who opposes this phrase because of their racist beliefs aligns the board with racists we have no place for this in palm beach county and we certainly have no place for this in palm beach county schools i've taken the time to teach my grandchildren and my children that racial equity is important in the school system and in our community and it is incumbent upon the school board to keep the proper phrasing because white privilege is real thank you hello my name is liam team brown i am a resident of west palm beach a voter and supporter of many of the
196current and past board members of the school district of palm beach county i am calling today to stand in opposition to the potential appeal of the recently approved school district of palm beach county's equity statement now more than ever it is critical to not only close achievement gaps that have long been burdensome to black and brown students but to do so by acknowledging the ripple effects of historical inequities in education in this country we must tell the truth about race in this country because only the truth will foster change race mutual efforts not only harm our black and brown students it harms every student thank you for your time and attention to this matter and i look forward to continuing to support you in these efforts in the very near future hi this is laura
197goodwin i'm a student at westbrook raton high school i am making this call to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barbieri our district representatives to keep the equity statement as written it is important to natural structure with a right advantage in this country including our education system so that all students visit the opportunities and access to succeed this statement is to not offend white people but to identify that all of our assistants in this country were meant to advantage whites and disadvantage people's color there is much to do to repair the initiatives that come for peers there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i am hopeful that we can
198put these words to action to ensure equity for all my name is lynn jones i am the parent of a student in palm beach county i am calling in reference to the equity workshop tonight i will not be able to be there but i would like my comment uh put in front of the board we will not have you division with our schools within our schools my son said that prior to this prior to they had no problems in the school they did not look at race they did not look at color they looked at friends and values and and respect and that's who they chose as friends i do not want those comments those divisive comments kept in our mission uh and again i will not have you stroke division within our schools thank
199you hi good morning my name is crystal rambarak and i'm calling in support of keeping the equity statement as disease i am the parent of two biracial children in the palm beach county school district i'm a self i'm a woman of color and an immigrant and i have lived experience of systemic oppression and i strongly believe that our students deserve to be taught the truth to be taught fairly and the most transparent way possible and i think it's the responsibility of our school and school district to ensure that our children are given an accurate account of history to inform their education and their lives going forward thank you for your support and i appreciate the attempt you started with the equity statement i would like to keep it as it is thank you all right
200hopefully i'm getting this in under the wire my name is david king i'm calling because i understand white privilege i am white and uh i read the equity statement and i think it's fine as is i think calling to remove it is going backwards uh we need to be inclusive and acknowledge reality uh please keep the statement as is i think that's best for everyone and it addresses reality and helps heal our nation thank you hi members of the board and dr fennoy my name is kyla rios i'm speaking on the equity workshop that's happening today and i have to be honest with you you have a lot of parents very nervous about this because of the critical race theory that's being thrown around in our nation right now um i wish we kind of
201knew what was going on with what you're thinking and i do think it needs to be something that you include the parents on every step of the way um as of late i've noticed that we as parents have been having to been way more motivated to babysit your the board because a lot of things are coming down the pipeline that are making us extremely nervous um can i tell you a quick description of my children's day when they come home they usually tell me something that happens i'll ask them oh who did that funny thing on the playground and they'll respond with something like oh the girl with the glasses they're the funny one or they'll say something like oh the boy with the curly hair never once had my children come home and said
202to me oh the spanish one or the black one or the white one and that is because i have worked my butt off as a parent to teach my children to judge a person according to the contents of their character and not the color of their skin they just don't see it they don't see the color of their friend's skin they see their humor they see their intelligence they see their ingenuity it's really actually beautiful because i as a parent as a child i wasn't really i didn't grow up that way i had grandparents that didn't teach me that so for me to have that attitude for my children it literally makes me almost cry because it's so beautiful um but now we're starting to see that there's something coming down the pipeline where we're
203trying to reverse that we're trying to tell children oh this is something you need to know about that other people of other skin colors have this place in society and you have this place in society and we're actually putting the glasses back on their faces that we've worked so hard for them not to have i would suggest dr fenoy and members of the board that you go sit in a classroom and you tell me do you think these children need to be taught how to see their friends differently how to judge their friends based on the color of their skin because right now they don't they don't see it that way because we as as the parents we haven't taught them that way so please do not reverse the hard work that we as the
204parents have put into our children to teach them that all of humankind is beautiful and wonderful and they don't need to differentiate between their friend's skin color let me just check my notes i've heard that you've it said that you've awoken the mama bear and let me assure you that you have and you've also awoken the papa bears in this county and we are watching very very very very carefully about what you're doing right we will take action to make sure that you do not continue to harm our children with the policies that have been coming down and now with this racial rhetoric thank you so much for yes my name is sona shorendem and i am a parent and i am a woman of color and i'm an educator and i'm an advocate and
205i urge you to accept the equity statement as written as is and i urge you not to edit the statement in the spirit of equity thank you hello my name is christine janiszewski like many parents i'm not going to stand by while you try to push division and racism on our children your new so-called mission and push to teach racism is nothing but a movement to drive white people through the mud and bring back the race wars of the past dr martin luther king jr would speak out against your movement he would remind you that he fought for equal rights and love and that you are taking a huge leap backwards you are fueling hatred within people who have never had it before let me just point out some so-called white privilege that you speak
206of that my son for example encountered in your district first of all a few years back he was being tested for giftedness he misqualifying by a point why because he did not earn extra points for being a minority oh wait that isn't what privilege is it that's minority privilege but we do not fight against the perks and extras that are given to minorities equal opportunity these days could mean minorities have an advantage as in minority quotas on jobs and college assistance skin color and ethnic backgrounds are constantly taken into consideration when planning classes in the district as well you see there is no white privilege going on in our schools or in society ben carson is a highly intelligent man who did not come from an affluent background and yet he was able to become
207an outstanding neurosurgeon and a cabinet member hand-picked by a white president wow oh wait that isn't white privilege because ben carson is black and i must note that i respect and look up to ben carson he has more intelligence in his pinky finger than any of you or all of your brains combined and i don't mean disrespect i'm just pointing out that you have a very very ignorant push with this racism i could go on and on for hours about the successful black people who have had been helped by the system to get where they are and also those who did it on their own and also about white people slighted because of the system or did it on their own but i won't it should be taught that hard work and determination gets you
208places all have the opportunity to get where they want to be no one should be handed anything or have anything taken away because of skin color or ethnic background that is not a quality so you do not need to force division and hatred towards all white demographics we as parents need to teach love tolerance and acceptance of all people we need to teach our children to look at people as individuals and not judge them by their looks or by history we should never generalize you should not be involved in the teaching of values and morals to our children because you are one-sided and very very wrong your crt is a theory a very racist theory and we will not stand for it you are a disgrace to the educational institution stick with teaching academics you
209know nothing about love and peace hello my name is marissa stevens i am calling as a mother of a black son and a white daughter and i'm calling because i oppose the new equity statement and whatever you guys are doing we're trying to introduce the critical race theory that we came here to florida from california where they were using the critical race theory to abuse our children my daughter was told that slavery was her fault she had it constantly apologized for being a white child and my son was told that if he were to encounter a police officer they would kill him on the spot and first of all none of this is true if you look at the statistics policing in america is not killing one race more than the other one white people
210are getting killed just as much we have his father who is an officer black officer agrees with me and he's highly against this propaganda you guys are trying to push so i don't know how you think that makes black children feel he was also told that that hard work and turning in work on time being a good person are all attributes of whiteness that he would never be able to be that because he doesn't have wide advantage and that's terrible it's terrible to be pushing this on these children and i personally feel like if alexandria and megan bell and all these other white liberals feel like they have white advantage then why aren't they giving up their job why aren't they giving up their positions that they've gotten with this right advantage and letting you
211know other black or pse individuals to have those positions okay why aren't you giving all of your money to all the other black people that are not working okay and furthermore megan bell is trying to get rid of a black member of this school board so she's saying that she has all this white advantage but then she wants marsha to be fired so personally i feel like liberals are exactly the same as they've always been these guys the teacher activists the school board activists these union activists are basically just a kkk reincarnate okay they want to make black people feel like they cannot ever succeed they want to stay above them they want to show all their right advantage their white privilege i mean it's pretty much equivalent of the kkk okay and i will
212not tolerate it i will take my kids out we've had it thank you hello this is amanda silvestri i'm calling on the equity agenda good evening i'm sorry to the parents that i could not be there in person one to six does not work for many of us the board knew that already though i would like to start by saying that as opposed to this equity statement as i am i am also not ignorant to the fact that you the board have already began your indoctrination mission long ago i will quote from a gifted endorsement course document white teachers and the white children they teach need to understand their position of privilege how dare you call out a race like this that is racist there is a book students are reading called ghost boys this
213is a story about a boy of color that was killed by a police officer what are you attempting to teach these children what is wrong with you i would like to quote mr barbieri from the equity meeting on 414 that nobody knew about he says quote we do not want to take this out to the community for them to start wordsmithing this like ms robinson said they will say now you're taking opportunities away from my kids let's just not even give them the opportunity end quote wow when is the last time this board looked at the organizational chart at the top it says students parents and community that means all students parents and the very community that you stated you did not want to give the opportunity to review and revise it you as a
214board have lost your way what happened to the mission statement of providing a world-class education to all of the children in your district equity is not equality equity is critical race theory equity is one of the many executive orders signed by joe biden you cannot bring politics into the schools you have been playing politics with our children for far too long and we won't allow it to continue equity is a leftist attempt to indoctrinate the children in hopes that when they are older they will have adopted leftist ideology this is about control it's sick and you will divide these innocent children in the process if you push this through and i decide to keep my children in the school district which is highly unlikely i want you to know that our home base is so
215strong and through communication and leading by example my children will love everyone and base their decisions on character always but it is so sad that you are willing to divide these children and create a hostile environment over politics it's honestly sickening if equity was equality you wouldn't be calling out any race but you are and it's not so here we all are in opposition of your radical intent and indoctrination thank you hi this is shakira norville i am a student at west boca raton high school i am making this call to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barberry our district representative to keep the equity statement already it is important to dismantle structures of white advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to
216succeed this statement is not to offend white people but to identify that all our systems in this country were meant to advantage white and disadvantaged people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities that and outcomes for people of color these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i'm hoping that we can put these words to action to ensure equity for all thank you hi this is kaden harveys i'm a student at west boca raton high school i wanted to make this call to encourage the school board as well as our district representative to keep the equity statements written i understand that um there is a bit of a uprising and trouble between some parents who had problems with the statement white dismantling structures
217of white advantage in um in our equity statement but i think that this should be kept in our equity statement this statement does not offend white people but rather it identifies that our systems in this country have been meant to advantage rights you look at history and there is advantage towards white people that's just what it is and i think as the school board you guys should be willing to keep this mainly because you have people of color who are in your district and who are still struggling to make sure that they make their way up to the top and be as successful as possible there is so much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color and these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit
218us all collectively i think we can put all of these words and actions to ensure equity for all and on behalf of all students of color i think that you guys definitely need to take this into deeper consideration because even though you have parents who are angry at this statement it's for the wrong reason and if people are taking it the wrong way then i think that you guys need to verify what you guys meant by this statement rather than just saying oh parents are mad let's change it you guys really need to explain to them and that's really it thank you bye good afternoon board members and superintendent fenoy this is lieutenant colonel jason b bolt united states air force retired subject equity and equity agenda i am severely disappointed that i cannot be
219there in person to rebuke you on your continued effort to inject racism into the palm beach county school district under the covert name equity despite the explicit and direct declaration to stop by governor desantis on may 20th a day after we exposed your intentions to the florida and to the rest of the nation you remain subordinate insubordinate to the governor's vision for a merit-based constitution-driven public education one private school parent in new york was still aghast at the equity agenda that he wrote a letter to push back to his private school his words are very powerful and have influenced us all we as parents have no longer any confidence that you will guide our children in quality education you will not help them in healthy development or critical thinking or instill responsibility into becoming a
220civic minded adult you heard my speech loud and clear on me 19th as you tried to muzzle me i exposed your socialist roots to the nation we are mobilizing daily we will defeat you in the florida legislature or on election day in 2022 and beyond collectively you are all degenerate of the mind impervious to reason and hungry to be government-led power we the people have drawn the red line and you will not cross we will not allow you to destroy the god-created minds of our children we will not allow you to make them trolls to bow to the knee of an orwellian government we will never stop our fight against her equity plan and god is the ultimate judge make no mistake the people of america the people of florida and the people of palm
221beach county in our school district will win the day in the end hi my name is kristen cox and i'm co-founder of thrive collective a community asset development firm supporting wealth and power building in marginalized communities i am also a parent of students in district 5 schools and reside in district 4. i'm appalled at our two representatives for folding under the pressure of allowed few for the efforts that are necessary to repair and uplift so many dismantling structures of wide advantage is dismantling systemic racism and will benefit all of us including white people what is very obvious in this display of white advantage is proof of how the education system has played a role in our lack of knowledge of race and racism in this country who built it why and who it was to
222benefit what is also clear by your reconsideration of the statement the equity statement is that we cannot depend on you or the education system alone to repair these inequities the people must organize collectively to create interdependent support serving severing our dependence on you to save us as i'm sorry severing our dependence on you to save us while this message is to demand that you keep the equity statement you have constructed intact as is the fact is that these are just words not action not a plan just words schools populated by children of color in this district have been neglected and left behind our children are exposed to silk and mold under qualified teachers racist teachers they lack access to resources for supplies and classes and programs that will help them grow and thrive in the
223same school district that is building new schools in white neighborhoods and where students have access and choice of six or more specialty academy maybe instead of writing equity statements you all need to do an equity analysis and you need to share that information with the students and parents in this district so that they can see what inequity looks like maybe then we can come together and do something about it hi this is bruno goodgat i'm a student at west boca raton high school i am making this call to encourage the school board and more specifically frank barbieri our district representative to keep the equity statement as your end it is important to dismantle structures of right advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to succeed
224the statement is not to offend white people but to identify that all our systems in this country were meant to advantage whites and disadvantage people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i am hopeful that we can put these words into action to ensure equity for all thank you for your time good afternoon my name is ernestine holliday i'm a resident of delhi beach florida i have raised my children they have grown up in palm beach county school system my grandchildren and now my great-grandchildren are attending schools please support the equity law as it is written we really appreciate that thank you hello my name is gallery um district
2257 for deborah robertson and i don't want to share my views as relates to the meeting that's being held today i'm starting at 12 and um i have full support and i'm calling with full support of the equity statement as as it is currently written i understand that there are some challenges in um voices of different opinions i want to have that removed being a descendant of slaves that have do blood sweat and tears built this country and have sacrificed a lot with their lives i find it important that that it remains the the education that allows for individuals to be aware of our challenges our struggle in what white privilege has meant over the years in order to prevent history from being repeated it is necessary that history should be taught as it occurred
226and so i wish that the equity statement that has been included in the um documents for the county remain as is and i look forward to your your vote of support uh with all the divorces that are calling in and looking to be present at the meeting as it relates to the equity statement being currently um as it is currently written to stay that way without any abridgement or adjustment thank you again willie vanson billy beach 561-901-5145 hi there my name is andrea traynor i am the parent of two children in the palm beach county school district either preschooler and a middle schooler i would like to leave a comment today addressing uh the equity statement and the ruckus that it has caused throughout certain communities i do not agree that the statement should be
227changed due to the opinion of as mr barbara called it the eye of the beholder that is not how mission statements that were discussed that were voted on that facilitators and all sorts of people come together to craft it is not then up to the eye of the beholder to take what they will from it mr barbieri made comments about the board having completed racial equity training and therefore you know putting them on this uh level of understanding that in his opinion that the rest of the public was not up to but once again we have the worldwide internet at our fingertips any person that took issue with the word equity versus equality has the opportunity to then research for themselves the difference between those two terms mr barbieri mentioned that parents were calling board
228members marxist and communists so certainly if they're able to research what those terms mean they can do the same and apply that level of research and knowledge to understand why the term dismantling systems of white advantage why using equity versus equality are so critical and i applaud the school district for the great length that you went to to craft and approve this statement as it was mentioned these were bold statements i believe mr barbieri called them incendiary statements i do not believe that they are incendiary in intention they were bold in intention and i would really encourage the board to stick with that bold statement and really um you know stand by your convicted we've elected you to do just that so please do not cave under the pressure of those that are not willing
229to do the work thank you good morning school board members my name is martha caballo i'm here to comment on the brd1 equity statement as a hispanic woman who immigrated to this country i was fiberglassing and i received the district name mission vision and equity statement all of these statements permeate with the latest marxist words of equity bias discrimination dismantling system of oppression inequity racial equity historical historically marginalized systematic oppression right advantage redistribution resources all these words are rooted in critical race theory based on core remarks belief and i strongly object to you teaching this to our children i was blessed to come to this country as a young child from nicaragua this country provided me with an amazing opportunity to succeed i was given an equal opportunity to succeed i know the difference between
230equality and equity equity sounds nice everybody having the same outcome however those are the words every communist totalitarian genes are used to gain power all over the world these are the words insanity says the communist organization in nicaragua used to gain power now everybody has equity and that we are all poor and oppressed and i've had to clean our country i oppose you teaching our kids and our teachers that our country has structure rooted in quite a banners that must be dismantled the united states is the greatest country in the world because to provide us all with so many freedoms and equal opportunities if it were not so why do you think we have millions of people from all over the world further lives on the line for a chance to live here there is
231always room for improvement in everything but the district needs to come on this from a place of gratefulness gratefulness for what we have and the desire to make it better not from a place of hate with a desire to dismentle as addiction continue on this path my family will be forced to remove our four children from the school board of palm beach county i truly believe you're coming from desire to do what is special as students i also believe that most and not all of you were born in this country have not had the opportunity to live abroad therefore you are not truly able to understand how wonderful this country is how much is equal student is provided to all of us thank you for your time bye-bye my name is cheyenne bill and i
232will be addressing the change of the equity statement you cannot change the word white privilege advantage change will never happen if phrases are sugar-coated changing the phrase means that you are putting the feelings of fragile people above the need for change you are putting the feelings of fragile people above the need for truly supporting and acknowledging students and parents of color if we are talking about changing a system that caters to a certain group of people we have to acknowledge who benefits from it and who is hurt from it we cannot expect change with such vagueness if the phrase is removed we see the statistics and we see the disparities in person we know about the systems of oppression that have yet to be dismantled any parent or student who is so worried and upset
233about this phrase will take the time to do their own research and teach their kids you cannot be afraid to call off islam that perpetuate oppression by its name we have been fighting for equality for centuries we have already been moving too slow let's not move backwards my thesis and nephew deserve an education in which the truth is acknowledged they deserve a scoreboard and officials who understand and explicitly state what they are trying to fix and who they are trying to help we have not been fighting for equality for this long just for the school board to change the phrase and pretend that like they do not see us or who are what is hurting us acknowledging this does not cause division it only showcases the already existing divisions how can we fix something if
234we are deliberately hiding it there is unity in truth this is an education system in which we understand that there is fact and there is opinion the white advantage is a fact proven by math and social sciences if you are obsessed about it you are afraid of losing your own advantage you are only showcasing your agility and that is that the very reason this phrase has to stay hello my name is i am calling about the critical rate theory and i want to ask you please stop it this is not healthy for our students i was i used to be a teacher and i know how the children will be impacted against this theory please stop it uh and do not try to uh harm the children there is there are thousands of parents and
235grandparents against this failure and please stop it don't let hi my name is martinez i am not i am not approved the critical race theory to be part of the our mission vision equality statement please stop that please stop that martinez equality please stop that i am not approved the critical race theory to be part of our mission vision equality statement stop it please my name is dina martinez telephone cinco says high school and i'm making this call to encourage the school board more specifically frank barbari our district representative to keep the equity statement as written it's important to dismantle structures of white advantage in this country including our education system so that all students receive the opportunities and access to succeed um so like this statement is not to offend white people at all
236like but to identify that our systems in this country were meant to advantage white and disadvantaged people of color there is much to do to repair the inequities and outcomes for people of color so these efforts do not so that these efforts do not harm or take away from white people but benefit us all collectively i'm hopeful that we can put these words into action to ensure equity for all thank you good afternoon superintendent and board members my name is minister greta britt and i am the founder of united believers of delray beat as well as a parent i am i am speaking to you today to let you know that we support the school board's equity statement as is and we are asking you to do the same i also left each of you
237a voice email message united believers is composed of clergy and faith leaders within delray beach our mission is to work together in unity to address the needs of our community and stand against unrighteousness and injustices we stand in solidarity with unified and faith in florida in support of the school board of palm beach county equity statement as is it is imperative that our county's public school system is committed to dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating biases and redistributing resources to provide equitable outcomes remember dr king said the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience the way he stands at times of challenge and controversy where will you stand dr king also
238said the time is always right to do what is right we are asking you to do the right thing and leave your equity statement as is thank you good morning members uh my name is juan carlos carballo and i'd like to give you my thoughts on the brd1 equity statement uh i am a hispanic male i did immigrate to this country and i am appalled by the district's new vision uh vision an equity statement if you wish to destroy the future of our kids uh and the future of this beautiful country you're on the right track i fled a communist regime and i cannot believe that the us is now heading in that way i am a minority and yes my skin is dark but i have worked hard and i have succeeded this is
239also true for my friends and my family hard work pays off and i'm living proof of it i teach my children god's values and morals the importance of hard work the importance of learning it is our responsibility as adults to teach them and prepare our children for adulthood if you continue with this harmful vision i will be forced to remove my children from your schools many people are upset with you and do not agree with you but people tend to stay quiet but i'm here to tell you that you're in the wrong this way of thinking is not right thank you very much for your time take care good afternoon my name is cassandra macras and i am a former teacher for palm beach county middle schools and elementary schools i served as a science
240coach and a middle school stem teacher in the charter school and english language arts with my just my previous position in the north area i wanted to call and first speak about the course failures or first and foremost talk about what equity means to me and that means that everyone should be treated fairly that means staff students and any employee on the campus but most mostly we want to make sure that the course failures are accurate and from what i gathered just previously working i noticed that students were not being graded or assessed in the appropriate way reading plus and the fsqs and usas seem to be setting them up for failure i think there needs to be more informal assessments and that could eliminate the students from going to middle school course recovery or
241if in fact it's necessary then they should go to course recovery and shouldn't be pushed through the system if they do not have paperwork or iep we need to increase the parent communication for testing schedules for the fsqs and usn i know that i am a parent of a first grader and a third grader and i do not have any knowledge of when those tests are happening in the classroom i wanted to also make sure that i touch on increasing paper trails for example cbirs the corrective behavior interventions need to happen in order to eliminate the out-of-school suspension those paper trails need to be documented students serving detentions these things need to happen first before the referral parent conferences in my last school i wasn't able to hold parent conferences without my team in order
242to schedule a parent conference as a teacher i should be able to do that on my own and not have i shouldn't have to schedule a meeting with a parent with an entire team you can't coordinate schedules of all those people please take this into consideration my name is paula shaw and i'm leaving a message for the special meeting regarding the new equity statement i'm a parent of two children in the palmetto county schools and i agree that it's of utmost importance to ensure there's equity in our schools and community no one person is better than another and no one person should be given an advantage however by using a blanket statement that identifies one group as having an advantage over another because of how they look is the very definition of prejudice and leads
243to racism i want to know what structures are currently in place that are oppressing another racial group what resources will be redistributed parents and taxpayers need to be involved in the planning process and informed of changes the board plans to make it's unacceptable that rather than using this as an opportunity to create a statement of unity in leading by example the board singled out a group of people based on the color of their skin this type of language is racist and it's a form of bullying which has no place in our schools i appreciate this opportunity to speak and i hope that we can all be included in this process thank you hello my name is aaron maggio i live in district 1 in palm beach county and i'm the parent of two children one
244a middle schooler and one an elementary school student my middle schooler is an excellent student not because it comes naturally but due to her hard work and drive to do her best i believe any policy that tells her different or any child different is wrong and i won't stand for our schools to tell her any child otherwise i believe the public school system should teach core academics reading writing arithmetic and factual history as my children have active parents to teach them their core personal beliefs character and morals i want to say shame on the leaders of the school system as they think they can force their ideology and political beliefs on the children of this county and shame on us parents who weren't paying attention to the school board who thinks they can push these
245items through and by changing their wording and not their thought process we are now watching you closely and in the future thank you this is christine campiolo jones i am an immigrant i am a child of an immigrant i am an ivy league educated doctor entrepreneur and i am a mother of three children in palm beach county i am also an accreditation expert and i consult for companies in south florida and i understand the need and requirement to update your mission statement the mission statement unanimously approved by the school board is the reason for my call today if i was your accreditation auditor i would have a significant problem with a mission statement that does not address the root cause of your problems here is what i have gathered from the data that was provided
246to wptv which is a news outlet in west palm beach in elementary and in middle school the discipline issues have been trending downwards for the last four years provided that there are no changes to how discipline issues are being identified in the school this is a win for the district the most significant reduction in discipline problems is in the cohort of black males it has trended down 2.1 percent in four years this demonstrates that if all else remains unchanged your policy to dissuade discipline issues are working after looking at your data for high school students suspension data has no trend except for in one cohort the most significant trend that i saw which was not highlighted in your analysis is for high school females in the cohort of free and reduced lunches another gain for
247the district your data on who failed classes in ninth grade based on race and category is not an accurate representation of student performance as it is not trended data and it occurred during a pandemic most of these kids were at home these children feeling these courses has nothing to do with white advantage it has to do with the district mismanagement and the lack of an emergency plan which is likely an accreditation deficiency or a non-conformance other than the data provided by the news outlet i have not seen any additional data but what i can tell you is that white people as a race have no impact on how the school district interacts with black ese free and reduced lunch children white people do not impede your communication with these cohorts in fact in your data
248many in many instances hispanics and whites had similar metrics but the school board chose but the school board chose to isolate white people i would highly suggest that the school board go back hi my name is casey barnes i'm calling an equity workshop i was calling with concerns about what you guys are trying to teach your children um especially their young children in school you know i am white and i'm very proud of it as everyone should be proud of their race i believe that you're mentally hurting our children um just flat out teaching our children racism at a young age you know children they don't see color they only see you know how well they play together how they treat one another they know you know good behavior from bad behavior you know by
249teaching them this you're teaching them to see color teaching them to be ashamed for being a different color than let's say the kids sitting next to them um by creating this program you are creating a pro a problem you know it's harmful to our children in so many ways brainwashing them with this false information you know these kids are the future of our country and you are setting them up for failure teaching them division segregation to be shameful of their race of their color um you know these teachers unions the institutions you guys are making it clear that you are not here for our kids you are here for yourselves and you are holding our children hostage by these ideas that are not based on reality if you keep pushing this garbage you you're only
250going to further wake up more parents who are going to pull their students from public schools or whatever schools that are going to go along with this i really do not believe in it you really have to hold yourself accountable for what you are doing toward children whether you're masking them or whether you're teaching them this is not okay it means and you need to listen to us this is not right i don't agree with it um and i really hope that you guys hear us because we will not stop and you should be ashamed of yourself thank you this is reginald cox calling for the item on the gender floor regarding the palm beach school district equity statement current equity statement i am calling in support of leaving the statement as is the chair
251of the north side the set neighborhood alliance in valley beach represent a thousand acres and 25 neighborhood associations and we are calling for the school district to leave the equity statement as for a tremendous amount of number of reasons uh throughout the history of this country issue this county it is imperative that the school district stays on the side of social justice licenses and equity for all in this capacity thank you good morning everyone my name is nina lover i'm here to comment on dr d1 equity statement i categorically oppose the school district of palm beach county bringing the poorer masses critical race theory ideology into our school system in addition governor desantis has stated crt will now be taught in our schools and the district's latest mission vision and equity statements are passive crp
252i am in this country because i had to flee my communist country i know what all of these marxist words and beliefs lead to they lead to impoverishment and oppression equitably across the board the united states is a great country this is the reason why millions of people from all over the world want to make this country their home in everything and everywhere there is room for improvement for natural hate i could not sit idly by and let the new generation of students be proud that this country is built on structures rooted in wide advantage that must be dismantled that he has historically marginalized people that he has systems of oppression this country is built on a belief that all men are created equal and as such you have become at the event of life
253for so many immigrants like myself i just wish you as native u.s citizens to realize how great this country truly is please do not destroy this country if we continue to go down this path i will have to remove my three children from the school district of bondage county the new mission vision and equity statements bring forth nothing but facial position amongst the public and even soon and now doing that amongst our students please let us come together thank you good afternoon my name is shayna latoula i have three children in the palm beach county district and i am speaking on the agenda item the equity statement i have found it very divisive after reading this equity statement instead of bringing unity to our county it seems that you have brought division and racist viewpoints
254if we if we read the definition of racism it's a belief that a race is a fundamental detriment of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race so how does dismantling structures rooted in white advantage not apply to the definition of racism when it is a particular rate now i also have concern about the fact that the school district wants to take ownership for the students academic mastery only a student can take ownership of their mastery along with the support from the family unit the parents siblings from the the teachers around them i want to know what is the ownership interest in our children for our school board last i checked our children our the parents are the owners of the children not the school board not
255the school district i think that they want to develop let you say you want to develop agency and voice yet you're eliminating a whole race to be able to represent their voice i think that this entire statement needs to be eliminated and we need to bring some unifying language for our students and for our children thank you yes at this time um i'll have our chief of staff mr ed tierney and catherine villasancio come forward um and lead the board in a review of the equity statement and other pieces and i will participate with the board as they progress mr tyranny chairman barmiury vice chairwoman mrs brill school board members dr fenoy i'm pleased to be here this evening to help facilitate equity workshop number four the purpose of which is to give the board
256an opportunity to discuss the equity statement and then discuss potential next steps i'm joined this evening with miss kathy villavicencio you'll see the agenda for this evening and our portion will go quickly the first bullet why equity and i'll remind the board that this entire process started with data analysis and that analysis during that analysis the board surfaced and was evident that there are gaps in performance among our students and the board signaled and the superintendent signaled that the next strategic plan should address those gaps and improve outcomes for all students and that was the origin of this entire process we're going to cover the timeline briefly in a slide you've seen many times before and then we're going to make sure to try to keep students centered when we talk about the pre-work phase
257that's in the process of winding down the strategic planning phase and the creation of the goals that will serve as the backbone of that plan and ultimately the ex the execution of that strategic plan which will be designed to improve outcomes for all students slide is a recap of how this work started we started with the pre-work phase which was mission vision and equity that's a critically important portion of that phase but i'll remind the board that that that pre-work portion is designed to influence or impact organizational outcomes that should or actions that it should improve outcomes for our students so that pre-work phase including the data analysis will then lead to the planning phase and ultimately the actions taken for take that we'll take as a result of the strategic plan we're in the
258process of creating and this is the timeline you've seen it many times we won't spend much time on it but i'll just call your attention to how much work has been done beginning with the data analysis and the root cause and culminating in the board being presented with the strategic plan in late july hello board so um today we're also just taking an opportunity to recap this work because we also know that as mr tierney said a lot has happened and so trying to revisit that foundation i think for members of the public as well to address some of their concerns and questions that i know y'all have received as well as we've received into board office so this is an opportunity to do that so back in november you saw that puzzle piece really
259using this as a time to set a strong foundation for the next strategic plan i know there have been questions about instruction in actual classrooms but it's important to remember really this work is informing the strategic plan um and so you know we started with that root cause analysis as mr tierney said always grounded in the data that led to you know what does equity mean in our educational system again really focused on the data not really politicizing this but using that as the motivation for focusing and trying to understand why aren't we seeing the same outcomes for every student and then that led to mission and vision revisions that were ultimately adopted by the school board on may 5th and so you'll see there at the bottom we kind of have this this bike
260analogy that we went over way back when with mary fertacus on a quality versus equity right so not the same bike for everyone but the bike that they need and and so you also have a copy of that just as a reminder since again we know folks have talked about defining things what does this mean what does that mean so that's just a nod to making sure we remember kind of how we how we got to this point so everything that we do is about students right that's the mandate that we have from the governor from the department of education the students have to be at the center of everything that we do you know school board's purpose is is making sure that every student has what they need to be proficient reach certain outcomes
261and you know that is also just what the what the purpose of the district is as well so wanting to make sure that we are just grounded in centering our students and remembering our why and so we talked a little bit about the data mr tooney and i will just very briefly go into certain data points this is not all the data that y'all looked at for the root cause analysis you know on march 3rd our deputy superintendent our cio and our chief of performance accountability held a workshop on our current strategic plan where we are where we need to go why we might not have met you know all of our long-term outcomes at the end of this year and so i also want to point out i know there were some comments about
262the data and not everyone succeeding right but this is an a-rated district right this is also a designated high-performing district by the department of education by their standards so when we disaggregate the data that's kind of where we see the inequities right so i just want to acknowledge that despite some of those disparities we see once we disaggregate that data this isn't an a-rated district by the department of education by their standards so that's important to recognize as well that's important context because i know it's easy just to kind of focus on the negative so but with that said you know student data is supposed to be used as a flashlight to help us get better to help us improve and so the first data point that you see is around students in elementary school
263who have one or more out-of-school suspensions right so we're again this is just us looking at our data and trying to understand you know what is happening right do we see any patterns or trends that we may want to dig into more right so um we do see some we do see some patterns there um in in our elementary school students and their out-of-school suspensions um you know some people had different analogies about you know a pool and the pool is so small and you know if you take some kids out of the pool then you put others in then not everyone's in the pool and i think what the board has talked about is making the pool big enough for every student not necessarily taking away from some to give to others so again
264just using that data to frame that if we look at height at middle school we see a similar pattern in terms of you know where the highest rates are i think this is also a great data point to illustrate that we have a lot of work to do in middle school in general right for all students and so as we look at our strategic plan as mr cherny said these are opportunities where we can kind of address these inequities that we see in the data not just for particular subgroups but also you know certain grade levels where we know hey there's something going on here when we disaggregate this data and then once again when we look at it in high school you know we still see this pattern what's going on here right why
265is this happening why do we see that in the data so again just wanting to make sure we're grounding this in the student data and revisiting really what motivated the school board to go down this path of equity this is ninth grade course failures this is one of the data points that we started on the data analysis looking when we started looking at it my opinion is you know for a principal or someone who supervises schools this is the most important data point to track because these course failures have a tremendous impact tremendously negative impact on the trajectory of an individual student and it really detracts from the culture of the school that those students attend so this is an example of data point and inequitable data points that we may or should probably look
266at to determine the cause and then plan to address through culture systems and instruction in order to minimize this impact and then i know mr and i were looking at some of these slides there's a lot on there and so i know someone referenced the downward trends right so we know that that's happening we know that work is being done but i think this slide in particular if we focus on uh you know 2020 which was covid we saw a huge spike right in course failures for a lot of different reasons it just kind of drilled home that those you know disparities those inequities are even bigger because of covid but again we can kind of see there's a pattern here what's going on why is this happening right how can we address that as
267a school system where our mandate is to make sure that every student is succeeding and we're not seeing course failures in the ninth grade at this rate and then in elementary school um you know our excellent accelerated math program we know has really great outcomes really sets students up so that they can take you know algebra 1 at a certain grade level which we know is an indicator of whether they're college ready right so we know that those accelerated math programs are a huge benefit to our district but here we can see who's enrolled at higher rates right and so again i want to stress this isn't about taking some kids out to put other kids in it's about how do we make the pool bigger right so that everyone is benefiting from this so
268that every kid gets what they need every kid gets the right bike so again this is about the kids and making sure that we're setting them up for success so again higher peaks here means that they're enrolled at higher levels doesn't tell us why right it just tells us there's a difference here why is that what's going on next two slides we're going to look at it a slightly different light and then in that these trends are generally positive so before i go too far into it we're not satisfied that the work is not done but we've generally seized a positive trend this slide is middle school student enrollment and advanced course work and we've we've talked many times mr oswald dr sheffield about masterboard analysis and the organizational focus we've had on analyzing our
269master board providing more access to courses providing more support and as we see these numbers trend up again that work is not done but as we see them trend up this this to me indicates to us that when we pick an important organizational data data point and we focus on it and we hold ourselves accountable that we are capable of moving in a positive direction and improving outcomes for students so that just highlights to me the importance of the data analysis finding the areas of growth creating a strategic plan to address the important levers that improve student lives and then holding ourselves accountable for doing that yep and pointing out everyone is increasing right you don't see one increase and then another decrease so again making the pool bigger this next slide is the high
270school version of the previous slide and at this point mr board share the time for board discussion board members miss ayala first i want to say thanks to staff for recapping the long road that's brought us here it's been a lot of work on everyone's behalf and i'm proud of it and for reminding us that none of this was done on a whim or with any other intent other than to get our district to a point where every single child can achieve better academic outcomes like we want to see those numbers continue going up on those slides so that shows that this statement has always been and is data driven it is now politically driven and it was created to make sure that our system is better for the nearly 200 000 students that we
271serve but before we get into addressing the equity statement directly i just want to make it very clear from my perspective just how inappropriate disrespectful and insensitive i thought that any holocaust comparisons we heard today were they should have no place in this chamber careless holocaust analogies that conflate issues and attempt to demonize and intimidate targets which are us are actually just detractors from the real issues that are challenging our society and create a space where we can't even talk about them collaboratively in a thoughtful discourse so i just really needed to say that because i don't think any of us up here have been called racist marxist communist socialists so much in one day and none of us are any of those things that's probably the primest example of why we need this equity
272statement and this work done in this district in the first place because we need to educate everybody on what equity means so that's a true irony here i hope that today we can focus on what we need to do which is looking at how we can provide a clear plan on this statement for its execution how we turn words into actions that filter throughout our district for successful outcomes that come out of these words and how we can be clear and specific and intentional with our vision and avoid these disrespectful displays of people who clearly miss the point that's what i hope that we can accomplish here today thank you mrs whitfield and mrs andrews thank you first i want to thank everyone who came to speak to us today your voices are important to
273me the reason i do this job is because i believe in palm beach county i believe we have more in common than those things that divide us my goals in this job have always been to elevate this community to make sure that each person has a voice i've said many times that i want to make our schools welcoming and supportive of all our children i've been listening to your comments i've heard many themes running through these comments everyone that came here today spoke and said on some level that they wanted an equitable education they wanted to make sure that their children were loved respected and taken care of in our schools no one wants to punish or demean one group of kids i don't want to make anyone feel that we aren't respecting their children
274or them that was never my intention one woman said that we should be teaching reading writing and arithmetic i want to assure you that this equity statement was made so that we can do this when you look at our data there's a huge difference beyond between how the work we do serves black boys which is our lowest achieving group not including ese and white girls our highest achieving group someone asked why would we do this during the time of the pandemic when there's so much going on this is exactly why we're doing this work now it is because our children are suffering at levels they never have before the number of children across the board who have f's on their report card have more than doubled throughout this district in this year we're not trying
275to indoctrinate your children or promote one political ideology over another i believe political discourse diverging views is how we get to the best decisions as leaders this work is just us trying to be honest about the deficiencies in our system doing this work is the most important thing we can do at this time when this system works for every kid all kids will do better your children will be more successful our goals are to be the best school system in the country nothing less will do because your children go here and so do mine i'd like to keep the equity statement the way it stands i believe in the work that we did if this board collectively decides that the words that we used are too harsh or they would like to change the wording
276i'll support that decision because what's important to me is that we are supporting every child the intention that we had behind the statement is what must stay that all children are educated affirmed and inspired to be the best selves i want to support uplift our children and i want to make sure that every person who comes to this school district has their best opportunity to succeed and that's it thanks mrs andrews and thank you and i want to thank everyone who came today and spoke to me as the school board member and the rest of the team here on the school board your voices are being heard we are listening to you it's truly important that we hear all signs and today i heard a lot and you know we uh started this equity journey
277with a consultant so i want to thank you uh mr tierney and miss villas for your work that you've been doing but i go back to uh we hired a consultant to to help us now today it would have been a good time to have that consultant here when we had so many people talking about what did you mean when we were in those closed door meetings and we were talking and she gave us direction based on her experience because i think the school district hired her i never saw the contract but the school district hired her to come in here and help us today would have been a good day to have her here to answer some of the questions and so as we move forward for the next steps do we still have
278this consultant uh mrs fratakus working with us have we hired more consultants i really do believe the statements that we're talking about here today are words and i and the words uh cause a lot of polarizations they have caused a lot of uh confusion for people and and people felt that their children were being discriminated because we were talking white advantage and and this piece that we we worked on today and so that's why it would have been really wonderful to have a recap if our consultant had been here so i just want to go back are we still working with this consultant do we have more consultants working with us or will it be the school board taking it to the next level when you say the next steps we we work with mr
279takas on the first contract who's worked through equity statement with the board the board recently approved her second contract and the scope of that contract was more to work within with capacity for staff so we are still have missed for takis on contract her focus has shifted from board as the pre-work wound down to staff capacity may uh may i request that each board member get a copy of that contract i think it's important for us because as we listen to the public today there were really concerns about how we came up with what we came up and we certainly didn't have any intent to cause harm to uh be uh causing decisiveness and to cause uh confusion and misunderstanding and for people to say that you know this was part of what we do
280i've been on the school board a long time and i truly work for academic excellence for all children and i know the actions mean more to me than the words and when we have seven words here that we're we're really uh concerned about uh on both sides one side saying we can't lose these words and the other side is saying that it's going to cause harm to their children it makes me say that we've got to come together we've got to come together and figure out how to do this this is why i was asking where was the consultant today and so when i when i when i look at this i felt like uh we've uh we haven't been inclusive with these words so that everybody could feel that there was something in it
281for everybody when we're talking about equity we're talking about each and every student and so that's why i was looking for the consultant today and i do believe that we must improve the performance of our underperforming children that's something that i believe in very very much and so when i say we're moving forward i just really want to make sure that we're getting that help that we need and is it just going to be your office doing it i know we have now formed a new office for strategic planning so i just want to know do we have a second consultant working with us the other part is insight which is working on the strategic planning process and we've talked about them a little bit nationally renowned for building equitable strategic plans throughout the country
282so that that's the other function that consultants are are performing for us right now and just for the boards um edification the um the consultant's contract is attached to the item yeah and now i will just add this fourth equity workshop was on the calendar since the beginning and we had always flagged that this would be the inflection point where mary is still informing the the slides for today we've had prep meetings with her i understand that she's had some one-on-one phone conversations with board members who also want to reach out to her she's absolutely available and so she has informed all of this and we keep in close context her right now she's looking at some of our processes and policies through an equitable lens because that was something that in her second contract
283that came to the board we talked about building that internal capacity and then um you know if the board decides that they would like to take this on the road and show the equity statement beyond those some of those community meetings that we had done at the end of last month then she can help inform that plan so that we can execute it so she's absolutely available to do those things she's on through june 30th but again i think we also just want to make sure that we're building internal capacity to be able to have these conversations and support you as a board as you continue this work in whatever way shape or form you decide makes the most sense moving forward mr barbara just let me just take it to another step so i
284would like to see the contract of that second person that you say that's helping us now there is another person i haven't seen there yes and i think that's important for us because when people are looking at us today they think that we're just working in isolation in here right and we're putting together things to hurt children and that is not true when i heard that today and we've heard that for the last few weeks and this is why we've got to go back because if it takes uh if these seven words is going to uh harm what we're trying to do with the mission because of all the people who are in anxiety because they feel that we're actually talking about you know some other plan in mind to destroy that's not what it's
285all about and i felt hurt and harmed today when i heard people feeling like we were trying to get their children and here we are the school board we've many of us have been here it's our responsibility to make sure that every child is successful not just with this equity statement but with actions to make a difference in the lives of each and every boy and girl and we don't want to hurt anybody that's why i think people need to know the full picture of who's been working with the board and how we got here and we have to revise and do some things to make it better so we can come together so much the division in the country now we have to come together on behalf of all the wonderful students and families
286that we have here in the palm beach county school district so we can move with this equity work we don't want to have pushback from parents and others because they feel like we're not all on the same page that's why i just really want to take a minute for people to know that apparently you have a second consultant the first consultant have been working with us we've all been trying to work through these pieces but it's obvious from all this time that we've spent today that there's a lot of misunderstanding there's a lot of hurt people feel their children are being not taken care of by the school board of palm beach county so we've got to own that and figure out what to do and i think we have to come together and just
287to elaborate on what mr trini said we do not have a contract with insight it they're providing their services for free based on the tsl grant that human resources department secured and i know we shared that back in january when we were going over critical structures strategic plan but we'll share more information they were actually going to be here today but since we postponed that workshop they're going to try and join us virtually next week but we will do a better job of making sure everybody understands who's supporting us in this work and i think it's for the board and for the community to know that we're all working together because right now there is a feeling out there that we're not working on the betterment for every child and that's what we're talking about
288we know where our faults are based on where we need to move to move our children to success but we know that we have parents and we have children for this whole palm beach county and this equity means for every child to move them to a level of success thank you before there's a response from staff i think mr barbary were you recognizing me next i'm i'm sorry miss brill was right ahead of you miss okay miss mcqueen did you want to respond no sorry mrs okay miss brill then mrs mcquinn and mrs whitfield thank you and first of all i want to thank you so much for bringing us the data again because it's good to be talking about student achievement that's what we're here for and to make sure that all students succeed
289i will make one comment on the data um i've repeatedly asked for this and i don't know what the problem is but i've been asked by the community the haitian community specifically they would like to see their the data broken out for the haitian community and i brought this up at each time we've had the data so if there's a reason why we can't do that if you could please share it so that i can share it back i would appreciate it so i have to first of all thank everybody that came regardless of what your perspective was it's very clear that what i brought up last week the speakers illustrated and the emails have illustrated the divisiveness and polarization that is caused by some of the words in our equity statement no one group
290should be made to feel less than any other or disenfranchised now some of the people wanted just to remove the words that i had suggested the last time the dismantling structures rooted in white advantage and just that sentence others suggested the whole paragraph i personally don't think you know i that we need to dissect the whole statement i think that it's as i said last week by removing the reference to white advantage we still make a very strong statement but i just want to say that equity is not just about race right we've talked about it we've talked about all the other groups it's about reaching all those students as mrs andrews said about working together the whole goal my vision was that we would have a statement that would bring everybody together so we
291could talk about making sure that every student is able to be successful i mean that's what we're all about i do want to close my comments with sharing something that um one of the people that wrote to us had stated at the end of her email sherry delaney from belle glade ended her message to the board and i i cut and pasted this out to read it she said when considering equity please consider carefully how your words and actions can negatively impact children and staff in your schools please find a balance that does not create a divide and cause harm please consider that in your efforts to create equity are you then punishing one race and causing division and i thought that was very profound so i wanted to share that and that's the end
292of my comments for the moment mrs mcqueen first of all i do appreciate all of your work thank you and that was not intended to be a reprimand i just wanted to get my voice in there so forgive me if that sounded like one it wasn't i am not going to address the equity statement right now what i want to address is mary fortakus she did not impose herself on us we invited her and she's been more than generous with her time at no time did miss fratakus try to lead our thinking sometimes she tried to slow us down in our thinking she did quiz us down a few times about whether we should socialize this before we voted on it and please remember this is not a policy this is a statement that we
293can amend but i personally did not want to socialize at first because for me virtual meeting i had two people two people contact me about why i didn't have a virtual meeting one was a principal who was worried about my health another was a community member and he and i've had several conversations by phone and email i know that my community does not work best virtually and i will be following up with school specific conversations about how we move forward but i really feel very strongly about for defending mary fortakus thank you mrs whitfield i just had a question for mrs andrews because she kept saying seven words and i wanted to know which seven words okay okay so i just want to make sure i was on the same page so she's talking about
294dismantling structures rooted in white and vantage and go ahead mrs andrews i just want to say to miss mcqueen i think uh mary patakis came in here and worked with us i'm just talking about like today when we had so much discussion it would have been wonderful to have her here as a resource people were talking to us and they were saying that they felt like we may have been having an ulterior motive for what we were doing and that's not true for any of us and i thought today would have been a great day since she has been our consultant been working with us that she could have been here to kind of share some some viewpoints as to some of the things that she had talked to us about because we did spend
295a lot of time and all the time that we spent i really didn't feel that we would be hurting people the way i heard the hurt today and i heard many people say they supported it but when we have the we're not coming together as one for the benefit of the children then it causes me to take notice and i just thought she would have been helpful to us to have her here today to give some comments because people do learn and that's what we did we learned from her that's why we hired her as a consultant the superintendent did and we heard her and she worked with us over the weeks and we came up with these words we know that action is going to be needed a lot of work has to be
296done to help many of the children here in palm beach county but today would have been a good day to have her that's why i just want to know when we are moving forward and we're talking through a lot of these issues if we have the resources there so people will know the board is uh being guided and working together with folks who've had some experiences maybe that we haven't had thank you and to follow up on mrs andrews i i i think it's only fair to say that you know that the board um we didn't ask for her to be here today in hindsight maybe it would have been great to have her here so she could have she's probably listening anyway so she could have helped us with with what we have to
297do here today but um we all you know we you know we didn't ask you to do that and you know again and follow up on mrs sanders it would have been great to have her today but she's she you know it's not your fault she's not here we didn't ask for we didn't ask for it again in hindsight it would have been great if we would have but we didn't so dr robinson thank you well i did ask for mary for tacos to be here today i was told that she was unavailable but um and i do think because we're kind of in our almost in our infancy as a board in addressing this particular difficult topic um that we could have benefited from her experience as part of our our dialogue but so
298i have a few comments that may seem a bit disjointed but i'm going to say them anyway so first off one of my favorite quotes is you must learn to look for yourself hear for yourself and think for yourself or you will find yourself loving your enemies and hating your friends and i think that that is a point because there's been so much misinformation there's this psychological term called transference where emotions and the organizing system of the patient is attributed to the therapist and this applies in many areas right in this case in my mind i i just i'm concerned each time somebody brings up the nazis and and we've been called nazis but some of what i see going on is similar to what i learned about the rise of hitler and it's frightening
299and so i'm really good if we can if we disagree on on the facts i hate when there's disagreement around misinformation or misunderstanding and so maybe part of it and maybe that's what ms fritakas was trying to tell us when she asked about socializing it is that we need to talk to people more so that they understand because there's clearly there were a lot of things said there was nowhere near what i was talking about right or what i thought that we as a collective we were talking about i hope that we don't allow people to divide us we as a board have looked at data we've looked at our processes we've had these workshops with lots of discussion and i thought that as a collective we accepted the need to change our system to
300address the needs of the least of us not to the exclusion of anyone else right and that's why i kept talking about this portrait of a graduate where is it we're trying to go what's what is the minimum and i want to be clear minimum in terms of success that we want for each of our graduates and any child who surpasses that god bless them i applaud them right but i think that we have to set some expectations and then we figure out how we work towards that and we do look at each child each and every child and when i did my little town hall media i said and and i mean this with all my heart one of the things that i was most proud of in our statements is that we change
301from talking about all children to each child because that's that's when we really when we really make progress and guess what it doesn't matter what the child looks like right but our statistics tell us that our system tends to not develop the human capital capital in certain children right and so i think that's what that was about i don't need to go back into into history or even into things i mean some of our the obstacles in our system have changed over time but the data's nowhere near as good as we want and guess what and i've said this from this diet we're not doing a good enough job teaching white children right so we just need to do better and if we focus on the needs of those with fewest blessings we will address
302the needs of all children and that's what i thought we were talking about and i want to just address a couple of things that just bugged me out with the misinformation teaching any race of children that they are not good that's not part of anything that we've talked about or that i imagined i can't imagine anybody on this diet would accept anything like that teaching children that this country is bad no guess what i'm trying to make this country live up to its promise right so yes we want every child to have a chance at the american dream right and no we're not going to either explicitly what what i'm hoping we end is the implicit messages to some children that you can't succeed and we're not talking about i'm not talking about teaching any
303of this stuff to children it's the adults whose minds i hope we change we were all grew up in systems that affirmed certain people and denied the realities of others right and adults now we carry that with us we carry the biases that we learn many speakers said children don't have these biases i agree they'll learn them though if we don't change the adults in our system and that's what i'm hoping to change one of the a teacher emailed and said it's essential that we educate not indoctrinate our children absolutely absolutely and somebody said there's this act keep this accusation we keep trying they keep saying that we won't teach children critical race theory no but as one of the speakers said i want to teach them critical thinking exactly and how to find the
304facts for yourself because there's so much misinformation out there for children and adults you can run down any rabbit hole and be absolutely certain you're correct and so one of the things we have to do is teach young people how to verify what they think is facts right so that the next generation doesn't operate on so much misinformation somebody said we're teaching black and brown children to be victims no i hope to work to make sure that they're not victims and that we're teaching children to see children by race no we want the adults to stop treating children based on whichever kind of ism is in the forefront of their brain at the moment that and there's many isms but this country was founded on racial bias okay that and that's just the truth i'm
305i just i want us to stop that and i think it is we can we can save this country in the next generation by making sure that the adults free their minds and stop operating out of their own implicit or explicit bias and that's what i that's what i thought we were saying in our equity statement mission and vision thank you so let me add my two cents i guess um the definition of equity is on the district's home page and i'll just remind everybody what says it says equity means each student regardless of race ethnicity poverty disability language status undocumented status religious affiliation gender identity and sexual orientation will have access to the opportunities resources and support they need to imagine nurture and achieve their dreams i believe removing barriers that many children face
306is the core mission of this entire board i believe the idea of an equity statement was to follow that definition and get the entire school district behind the critical work that needs to be done equity to me is removing those barriers standing in the path of a child's success and distributing and i want to clarify one word that we definitely need to change distributing not redistributing which kind of connotes taking from one child and giving to another district resources whether they be staff programs or funding to ensure every child no matter their race ethnicity and all those other all those other obstacles that might be in a child's way are removed so that the child receives the education that they deserve an education which allows each child to attain or achieve their highest personal potential
307not every kid is going to come out the same we can't do that it's not a possibility but we need to remove the barriers that don't allow any child or restrict any child from reaching the highest potential that child has within him or her it's obvious that when children come to us they're not equal you know the framers of the constitution said all men are created equal well that's not true we all know it some kids are born with cognitive difficulties some kids are born with other issues and and even if they're born perfectly the same as the baby in the next bassinet when they get to us things have changed right a poor child who may be white black or hispanic and can't read when that child enrolls in our school through no fault
308of his or her own needs additional resources to help that child get up to speed so he or she can move forward with his or her education would the taxpayers of this county support our schools who support our schools not want us to provide additional reading support to a child simply because the other children are reading on grade level are not being provided the same support providing those additional resources removes barriers for that child to a meaningful education that is an example of equity as opposed to equality a child comes to us suffering from cognitive impairment that child is far behind his peers due to his disability without additional resources provided to that child which his peers don't need educating the child will be a failure with the taxpayers who support our school say that
309providing that child with additional help without giving that same equal help to his peers who do not need that help is that wrong that is equity not equality that dictates the need to give additional support to that child just ask our teachers they get 20 kids in their classroom do they treat every child exactly the same and just give them the same lesson plans or do they give special attention to some children in the classroom that need special attention that's equity that's not equality quality would be you all got the same homework assignment you all come back tomorrow and take the test and we don't care whether you get a's b's c's or d's you're all being treated the same that's not that's not what we do in the schools that's not what we what
310our mission is the taxpayers don't want us to treat every child equal they want to make sure that every child gets the resources that they provided with their vote those tax dollars we allocate those tax dollars to make sure that no matter where the child stands when they get to us we can make sure that they get what they need to get them up there where they need to go and and for for you know for a profitable and successful future we live in a challenging times with more focus on what divides us than what unites us i mean it's obvious the country is at a place where in my 71 years i i i've never seen anything like this in my life even back in the 60s when there was all the turmoil then
311it seems like that was nothing i'm walking the park compared to what we what we're dealing with today we are tasked with educating our children anything that inhibits us from that task is mission creep the intent in approving an equity statement should be about bringing forth unity not the division and polarization that was the unintended consequence of our current statement due only to the words that we chose if there is more discussion about the words we use than the reading scores the math scores and the graduation rates of our children the process has totally failed it is clear at this point that we are at that situation the words have become the issue that's all the public is focusing on is the words they've totally missed out on our mission which is to provide a
312quality education to all children and give them the resources that they need from the tax dollars that they provided to make sure those kids are successful yeah the issues of race and equity are profound they deeply impact our community but our job first and foremost is to create a safe healthy space or where we can teach the next generation to read write add and ultimately be prepared to enter college or the workforce with the knowledge and skill set they need to succeed we can clearly see that after today's meeting if we don't do something to take away the words that cause all the distrust we're not going to be able to move forward i mean we're going to have them constantly come to the meetings blasting us we're thinking that we're on some some some
313mission to to change the you know change the whatever in this country to change us from a democracy to uh to a socialistic state i mean i haven't seen any of that we've never had any discussions with staff to come here and tell us what they're i mean i certainly would have recognized if staff was telling us hey we're going to change uh how we teach this to something that i would find profoundly uh untenable which is you know socialistic with tendencies and and trying to uh to indoctrinate children on something that their parents don't feel is appropriate for them and as dr robinson said i think was you dr robinson the issue is not the kids here it's trying to get the adults to understand what our mission is and and have and they
314need to understand that you know when we talk about equity we're not talking about critical race theory we're talking about allocating resources in a way that every child gets what they need in order to succeed mr superintendent yeah i just wanted to take a moment i think listening to the board and obviously the community what i find interesting about my reality is superintendent on the board i've been in a year and a half you know covid uh i've sat at this dice and been called hitler a nazi by a bunch of black people i've been called a racist by a bunch of white people um you know and it's very interesting to me you know i'm a proud son of a man who spent 22 years in the u.s military i grew up on military
315bases my entire life and so the idea of socialism and communism to me is just insulting you know my dad almost died in wars and as a young child i had to witness that and so but i'll say this the words yes they're polarizing let me tell you something if we don't put actions in place to deal with the data that we have been looking at for many many years before i got here and now that i'm here and the old strategic plan is expiring we have a new one ahead of us but the date is not lying the date is not polarized the daily the data is not political the data is absolutely truthful and so our goal i think what has been missed and we can do an analysis of what was missed
316and why people are so polarized around this but here's the hard truth we have students that are disabled we have students that are black we have students that are poor we have students of any demographic that you can imagine that have not been fully served by the school district and again and we don't know all the reasons and that's why we need to dig deep into that but our end goal is what the the old mission and vision was every kid every single kid and i think but we also have to acknowledge we have to acknowledge that every parent can't advocate and part of our role as as a board as staff is to figure out what each child needs to be successful we're in a moment in time whether you like it or hate
317it we are starting to get resources to begin to address this in a way that we don't have to take anything from anyone in all my years in education 22 years i've said this one phrase and people who know me well know this they call it a phenolism we have to raise the floor in the ceiling simultaneously and with that floor though we have to accelerate it so i'm not ever going to say my son's a gifted kid and he didn't we didn't we didn't pay someone a psychologist to do that he did that on his own he didn't do it because of me because i'm not that smart his mother is very very smart but i will say this y'all we have to raise the floor in the ceiling simultaneously but we have to
318accelerate that bottom and so i think we're just in a moment in time only thing i ask is that at some point we have to create the plan execute that plan and monitor that plan i think mr barbara and everyone else is right we're talking about adult issues we're not talking about kid issues y'all and so we've got to be brave and bold with our own teams and then truthfully we've got to work with the community on this we can you know over the years we put so much on public education that sometimes we don't ever get to talk about educating we talk about everything else now we have to embrace that because that's just the moment in time that we're in so the mental health work you know the new work uh mr oswald
319is going to be doing with equity and all these pieces these are necessary these are things that this board asks us to do things that i believe in now we still have to figure it all out we still have to build these teams but we we can't do this without a plan we cannot do this work without a significant plan based on all the data that we're looking at today because the data is not political the data is just facts mrs mcqueen gotta unfreeze my my screen whoops sorry um so dr robin said i don't want this to get lost i you know i say this with with all respect but usually she says things with a lot of words and this was said with so few words i don't want us to lose this
320this isn't about what we're teaching the kids this is about this is for adults and you know we've had a five-year strategic plan this all started why do we have an equity statement we we have to do our strategic plan well all the data knows and i'm referring specifically to black students right now we know that they significantly a large majority underperform our white students well five years of grandiose plans haven't made that much better so what are we going to do differently that's where all this started so please don't lose this this isn't about bringing this to our kids thank you miss ayala then mrs whitfield thank you um i wanted to touch back to the mary for talkis situation um i believe her second contract was passed unanimously on consent on may 5th
321if i'm recalling so the contract is there available for all of us to see and we all knew she wouldn't be here today as well but today more importantly we heard from other elected officials partner organizations community organizations community leaders parents faith leaders that represent the fabric of palm beach county and many of those folks asked us to stand by our words and not retreat right now i have 225 emails and counting in my inbox over the last week that is requesting to keep the statement as it is that's from parents that's from retired teachers that's from teachers currently working in our district that's from students and i'm going to go through the list of organizations that i've heard from including that united way of palm beach county the palm health foundation compass community center
322the anti-defamation league primetime palm beach county the guatemalan maya center community partners families first of palm beach county the coalition for black student achievement the palm beach county human rights council organizing against racism pbc alliance healthier neighbors a national association of social workers representative was here today various clergy a state legislator university professors including two from fau students parents and even a student petition from the national honor society president and atlantic high school named daryl asking for the racism and the discrimination in his school to end okay so now is not the time in my opinion to go back and forth on word and we've invested over 20 hours already doing that now is the time to work on what the superintendent just said how are we as the district leaders who are tasked with
323the work mary for talk has guided us through we are the district leaders not her her being here today wouldn't have made a decision moving forward on what we're going to do how we're going to instruct our team to do the job of equity what does that mean to us we have to hold firm in what our values are we need to focus on defining the goal of what this means to us and share that with our educational leaders in our schools to make sure that they can have clarity on the task of executing the vision as well as to all the concerned parents all over the county who are here today expressing their confusion and their anger and their frustration over what we released without a plan so that's that's the reality and frankly
324we owe that to our educators to have give them the tools to be successful at this we can't give them a losing proposition and expect it to succeed and we can't back up when we have some little resistance right right out of the gate statement isn't even a month old and we're getting pushback which we knew we would get at the workshop we all said we know this is going to be hard we have to do the hard work now of committing to what we said what we all agreed to what we all approved on consent on may 5th without hesitation or discussion and give our system the roadmap and the tools to make sure that we can increase the academic outcomes we all want to see increase for every single student we serve i
325firmly stand with the statement as it is mrs whitfield then ms brill and miss andrews i just wanted to talk really briefly about the disunity in the community um i i am very frustrated and saddened by it and by the people who believe that we are trying to um hurt their children as well i think this is a real impact of the pandemic i think the fact that we haven't had a chance to talk to people the way that we used to meet with people see each other be eye-to-eye you know go to meetings um so i think that you know going forward when we decide to do anything i really think we should make an effort to socialize it and and trying to get the word out to communities is really important because i
326i don't want anyone to think in our community that we don't hear them or that their voice is not heard and important to us because this is i one of the things that i like most about this board is because we are a non-partisan organization who really is there for all the children in the community it makes me very happy to be on the side of looking out for children and children and just who they are and we're going to help them so i don't want anyone in the community to think that we don't hear them and i think that hopefully as we go forward in our post-pandemic life things will start getting better and we can have better communication but i would like us in the future to make sure that we bring everything
327out to the community i think we've learned that the community will come find us if we don't so we need to make sure that we bring things to them first thanks ms brewer thank you so i have to disagree with ms ayela because words matter and the words in our equity statement are it's that's a separate issue to the work that we have ahead changing the words it's not going to change the direction that we take we know what we need to do we know that we have to provide the resources to make sure that all of our children succeed something that i fought for for many years it's still it's we're a lot better than we were with our students with disabilities but we're not there yet we still have a lot of work
328to do but it was very clear it's not just people that came to us supporting the words the way they are there were many people that were saying that they did not support the words they were that as they are we've made it clear that we want the words that are in our statement yes we need to socialize it but we they have to be words people understand and i still remember i had a phone call this week from one parent who called me up who has four children in the schools and she said to me i have two children that are biracial she said i'm white she said i don't want my middle school student coming home and telling me that i had an advantage over him you know those are the things that
329these words bring they bring up in people's minds no matter what you do and so you need to understand that it is dividing the community it is polarizing the words on our equity statement don't change i do like what mr barbieri said in the second paragraph at the end saying um sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources taking out the redistributing and make it distributing i think that that's a very good change to have but there is absolutely no change in our intent and our direction by removing the words dismantling structures rooted in white advantage because those are the words that are a trigger and i want this community to embrace the work that we're doing but you know absolutely we have not been discussing critical race theory we are talking about bringing
330up and providing the resources to all students so that they can be successful in school and in life beyond and this is critical work but to have a statement that divides and hurts so many people i did have one parent that called me crying asking me where her white advantage was and those are the things that are and yes it is an adult problem but it is but if we put this out the way it is it's dividing it's not uniting let's all work together to incr improve student achievement without offending misleading or dividing or polarizing or disenfranchising or making any one group feel less than any other group mrs andrews then dr robinson and thank you and i just want to say you know i work really hard in district 6 and it's truly
331not about me but one of my areas is an area that we've been working on for years since i was elected to the board and i recognize the shortcomings that we have faced within this school district i know that best of all because i'm in my car out there on the ground and i've been on this school board a long time so when i hear somebody saying that we got to stick with it when i hear parents that i heard today and i've heard over the last week really disgusted about just our message when we look at our equity definition and our equity statement it's beautiful except for that those seven words that i was talking about we don't want this to go down because we we have to stick with something if we lose
332one parent it's too many parents we want all of the parents to work with us to help us with all of these children that we're talking about we need to help it is going to be our responsibility as a boy it's been our responsibility as a board to do what we needed to do to bring these children up and and i've been working all of you have been working at it and working at it hard but when we have this kind of divisiveness that i saw in here tonight and i saw a little bit of it last week and it's out there we've got to find a way to stop that and to get back on track it is about the action i know about action and getting things done in my years on the
333school board i've taken a lot of action to make a difference for the quality of life and education for many children and you all have too and so we know about action this this is words right now and it's and we can do better than that we we don't have to say you know it's a group out there that's out there saying bad things and and they're screaming and hollering they're they're doing that for their children and they truly believe dr robinson what they're saying so truly it is about helping the adults come around but when you when you don't try to come together to help them with that because we didn't go out there with them to get their opinion on the front end i mean we were all in those meetings and we
334didn't do that but guess what i've learned something from sitting here that we should have done that piece and gone out there to do the socialization with them and we would have gotten more information and we would have known hey move back a little bit but we did not do that but we're here up in here today and it really truly is about each child every child i don't care what color you are we want them to be successful and i say that every day that i come in here and wherever i go is that what we want is to make sure that they're successful and every parent wants what success means to their individual child so when they come in here and talk about the critical race theory and all these things that you
335all are talking about that we heard today that's not what we're talking about but until we can reach out and bond and educate them and let them know what we're truly all about then we're going to miss some kids and we can't afford to miss anybody miss whitfield i hear you when you say that it is the mold right now here in palm beach county that's not good because of all of this misinformation and confusion we've got to make sure that we can dial it down a little bit and get back on track so that we can do all these beautiful things that we have written here in our equity definition and equity statement so we can move forward and we want to bring every parent along we don't want to leave any behind and
336we surely don't want to leave any students behind dr robinson it's a fascinating conversation i mean it's as if we weren't leaving some people behind or disenfranchising some parents or having some parents be upset before right and that's borne out in statistics so what i have gotten for years and years and years is unhappy parents not all black or brown but probably the majority right and so like what we have to do is what's right not necessarily what's popular what would you do if you went to your doctor and your doctor said well what do you want me to give you how do you want me to treat you for that condition i kind of think you'd be disappointed i kind of think you might want their professional expertise to weigh in maybe be a
337thought partner with you and talk about the pros and cons you know and and i don't think it's just gonna about these seven words if it's seven words right is something underlying that and i think you know many of us may recognize that uh but the point of the matter is we did all agree to it to these words we workshopped them i think twice and then it was on the agenda in the workshop i remember i specifically asked are you good with this because there will be some pushback now you know everybody can change their mind and each one of us has a vote i would suggest um if it's not out of order i'm gonna make a motion to close the workshop so we can get to the meeting and be done with
338this because nothing's going to change with all this talking we're doing mr superintendent do you have anything else for us for the workshop no sir we didn't have anything else right dr robins made a motion to adjourn the workshop said we have a second motion by mrs whitfield long favor pose motion carry 7-0 now call the special meeting of the board to order stay here i'll have it open just in case are there any disclosures or abstentions for this meeting seeing none we have any agenda item speakers none so the only item on here is brd1 i recommend the board discuss and as desired take action to modify amend or repeal the equity statement adopted by the board on may 5th 2021 motioned by ms brill seconded by mrs mcquinn discussion ms brill thank you
339so i'm going to suggest a change in the language in the second paragraph um with one change as i mentioned before the the word that mr barbieri suggested so that the second paragraph would read achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic impression the school district of palm beach county is committed to transforming our system by hearing and elevated underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources to provide equitable outcomes so that's the removal of the seven words plus removing the re in front of the word distributing mrs andrews i concur with miss brill on that i do believe this will help us to move forward to bring the community together to bring all the children and their families together and yes
340we all said this is what we wanted but guess what we've learned and i have to repeat every day is a learning process you can't be right all the time so when we sat there and we felt like this is what we wanted but we have heard we've heard from parents on both sides and we know that as a district we have to come together as one for the benefit of each child and so miss burl i love it because i was worried about those seven words and i like mr bobby aries distributing because it's for every child to get what they need each individual child and when we look at our equity definition and statement everything else i think we can move out of this room tonight on a good note that everybody will
341be working together maybe there might be other underlying things but guess what we know now we have to get to our communities and socialize this and talk with them to let them know that we're all out here for every child and for those statements that they said in there they're not true and we don't mind meeting them wherever they are to talk about how we're going to move forward in this school district to make sure that we have equitable outcomes for each and every child and we want all those parents to be alone with us as we move forward i i'd like she was the second yeah she was the second i can second that yes you seconded it so i just want to follow up on a couple things that were actually said at
342the workshop that we are now discussing too on this motion dr robinson said that um there's something underlying those seven words what those seven words do is they bring that underlying whatever to the surface as long as that underlying issue is on the surface we are not going to be able to move forward and get any work done because we're going to alienate people that we need to support us we need and with respect to miss ayala i appreciate the fact that there were lots of groups who supported keeping the statement the way it is but i would say to you if those those are great organizations and if some of those organizations were here today and would have heard with the disconnect from what people believe that what what the words mean and we
343asked them would you rather leave the words or try and try and bring the community together so everybody is working for the benefit of children i think that many of those organizations would have probably said let's forget the words and let's get the work on the job and get it done and if that means we have to change some of the wording but we're still looking at the children that need our resources including black children and hispanic children ese children ell children i think those organizations would probably say it's not worth the fight over words when you guys aren't going to get the work done because you're not going to get the community support that we're absolutely going to need on the strategic plan we're absolutely going to need the support of the taxpayers when
344we go back to them for more money if we have to do that when the referendum comes due and when the sales tax issue comes up we have to make sure we have community buy-in on this and at this point let's not focus on on keeping the words at the expense of losing the community support so i would hope that you all agree that we we need to modify and get to get those words out of there with the understanding that taking those words out still leaves the statement basically as ms pearl said very powerful and it gets the job done mrs mcqueen and then dr robinson i am going to end up supporting um the amendment but i want to explain why because we have we've created winners and losers here there's a lot
345more in the winning but this sentence the first sentence of the second paragraph where we say achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression that's a big statement so i can live with this dr robinson so just so we're clear there's there are many people who thought for fleeting moments it was like like camelot that we were actually going to work towards what every child needs i hear us saying that even if these words get changed that's what we're still going to do okay and what they're saying to me is yeah right we'll see okay that's what they're saying so be very clear that we can't make everyone happy and those organizations that miss ayala listed represent many many voices that we never hear
346right and so you know it's just once again it's like we're we're choosing between adults instead of focusing on the needs of the children in palm beach county and so you know i mean it it is what it is you know unfortunately it you know it just kind of the more things change sometimes the more they seem to remain the same and i know that's what i'm going to be hearing over and over and over again and so i hope we prove them to be wrong and i fully expect all the people that had all that misinformation that we proved them to be wrong too if i just may follow up on dr robinson dr robinson i i understand where you're coming from and i don't think removing those words takes us out of camelot
347as you described it i mean if you look at the fourth paragraph it says the school district of palm beach county acknowledges the existence of and will eliminate systems processes and mindsets that perpetuate race ethnicity poverty disability language status undocumented status religious affiliation gender identity and sexual orientation as predictors of achievement i mean it's clear in this this statement that all the other paragraphs including that one get to the heart of what we're trying to accomplish here which is to get all the resources that children need to those children the removal of those words doesn't change that and you know not you've been fighting you've been fighting for for for for you know marginalized children and you know and and underrepresented children your entire time in the school board and i think we've come a
348long way i mean this statement is something that i never would have imagined that we would get to and it does the trick without putting the words in there that is going to keep those people on that side of the room from coming to help us when we need their help so i would just like to you know get get this done so that we can move on and get to the strategic planning that we need to get in place we have summer school that's got to start we don't even know exactly how we're doing that we certainly need to discuss how the school year is going to open up next year and parents want to know whether all the things we got to do we've not got to that so we need to move
349on and get beyond filling the room with lots of people that are going to scream at us about words so that we can actually take action i believe you were next miss sprill just do we really think that changing a few words is where the divisiveness and the screaming ends do we genuinely i just i'll put it out there into the universe because it's not going to stop when do we stop catering to the loudest group and start doing what the organizations that we work with in conjunction to serve the most needed the most necessary population of students and the most marginalized communities in our system when do we partner with them and back them up because with all due respect they can speak for themselves and today they did they sent emails they came
350in and spoke they took time out to be here and make sure that communities that we want to see elevated in support are and these are words words are words until they become actions but words mean something to people and i've heard from my constituents every one of which reached out to me supported this so i know where i firmly stand on this i know that this is the right thing we will it'll be what it'll be i will see what the vote comes out to be on our decision moving forward but everyone who came here today and i wasn't saying the ones who disagreed with it weren't counted in my tally of emails but the majority of speakers today per my tally were in support of keeping it as it is and i had
351more emails in support of the statement as it is as opposed to so that's my account to make that clear to a board member's comment about listening to everybody i just think that we need to be very careful about remembering why did we put the words there in the first place i believed we all believed in them when we put them there miss ayala i'm sorry miss bro thank you so first of all dr robinson i have to be positive i have to be focused on us as being the ones that are responsible to do the job i trust in my heart that what you said is not going to be true i have to believe we have reached a point where we are truly going to focus on equity on making sure that all
352of the resources are where they need to be and that we raise our children up and that and so i will say that in reading the entire equity statement those groups that's what came supporting the words the way it is they are i believe if they read it once we remove those words it's it's no less powerful as mr barbieri said and it's up to us it's up to the district to the superintendent to come back with curriculum we need at every single board meeting to discuss the data and to discuss student achievement at our regular board meeting it should be on our agenda we need to start talking about where our students are instead of talking about the adults so i put that out there um my original comment was to discuss the change
353in the verbiage so i'm now going to make a formal motion that we change the second paragraph to read as follows achieving racial equity requires proactive and continuous investment in historically marginalized groups who have endured centuries of systemic oppression the school district of palm beach county is committed to transforming our system by hearing and elevating underrepresented voices sharing power recognizing and eliminating bias and distributing resources to provide equitable outcomes that was an amendment to the motion on the table was there a second mrs andrews any further discussion any discussion all in favor of the motion opposed the motion uh is approved with dr robinson mrs whitfield and miss ayala in opposition motion carries 4-3 i don't believe we have anything else on the agenda today mrs andrews you have a comment thank you i didn't
354get a chance to say this but it's important that i say this congratulations to all of the dwyer award winners last night 450 nominees 28 finalists and seven winners and i just want to call the winners names out all the people who applied worked hard for the dwyer awards jaina smith from gold laquandra golf from roland greene andrew kennedy from congress carla little griffith from glade central benjamin ford from gove elementary and mari armanda arsenio from glade central and cindy white from elbridge gail hurray for our teachers thank you to the education of the economic council of palm beach county for always doing a great job for our teachers congratulations to all of the dwyer award participants thank you thank you mrs anders motion to miss mr brewer thank you i wanted to first of
355all thank mrs andrews for bringing that up um and thank you to the economic council i thought they did a fabulous job thank you to the to the hanley foundation the the main sponsor um it was a wonderful event the one thing we didn't get accomplished today is talking about where we go from here in terms of the equity statement and so you know we talked about we want to socialize it i think we're going to need to have a discussion at a later meeting because we can't just drop the conversation or we're not going to move forward so i don't know if we want to buy a nod of heads discuss if we would like to have another workshop to to have more information um so i'm putting that out there are you talking
356about another workshop for the strategic so we can start moving on the strategic plan if i'm a um i'm think maybe prior to having the strategic plan workshop we can just talk about what our expectations are in terms of of the equity work if you want to have more conversations because that was on the agenda and we we really just blew it off when we closed the workshop can we yeah mr superintendent through the superintendent mr can we can we add that discussion at the beginning of the next strategic plan workshop that you all have we can and we planned on surveying the board after this workshop to kind of decide to determine what direction we want to go regarding updates on equity specifically in addition to strategic plan i think if you can also
357just allow us time so if we can send that one-on-one survey see see what's up what direction and then we can have a more informed conversation if that's okay with y'all because next week is going to be very busy and i just want to be sure we give it the time and space so just asking for that concession if not we'll make it work yeah i think we need to we need to work with the board but our agenda for next week is really really packed so i would prefer not to try to cram this in um and just kind of stick with our and then we'll figure out a way to bring it back sprill and if i may so whenever we do get to that when we start talking about the socialization let's
358work together also on how we meet with the communities i'm hopeful that we can meet in person in our communities because i had mentioned that my my community really struggled with the format you know that we used and i want us to be able to go out meet with the community um and be able to to get their support because i do truly believe that the community supports this work that we're embarking on we'll bring back some ideas so thank you for the extra time okay we need a motion for all the board members leave to adjourn so uh motioned by mr pearl second mrs anders any discussion all in favor post motion carries meetings adjourned thank you